SBK Edge Rush: What will Jimmy G do with a rare second chance?

Careers can change in a split second in the NFL. We all know that by now.

If Drew Bledsoe wasn’t taken out of the game by the Jets’ Mo Lewis, is Tom Brady given the chance to become the G.O.A.T? Does Dak Prescott ever start an NFL game if Tony Romo didn’t sustain a back injury against the Seahawks? The no-call, a missed field goal, the helmet catch. Trajectories are changed in an instant. 

San Francisco turn back to Jimmy

Trey Lance and Jimmy Garoppolo found that out on Sunday. The two quarterbacks, indelibly connected forevermore in NFL history, saw their respective fates interchange. One play, one hit, one fracture. 

Lance, the second-year leader who was brought in to replace a veteran who led his team to the 2019 Super Bowl, lost his starting spot and his season to the very same man when injury hit in the first quarter of the 49ers game against Seattle. 

Just moments before, Garoppolo was on the sidelines as a back-up quarterback, the purgatorial no man's land and a long way from former glories. San Francisco had wanted to ship him out of the bay, trade him for draft picks and offload his salary - that was the plan. Thanks Jimmy, we appreciate all that you’ve done but we’re going in a different direction. Take care of yourself, kid. 

But Garoppolo’s own injury changed that course. Under normal circumstances, a number of teams would have snapped up the former Patriot - and former back-up to Tom Brady - who has been solid, if unremarkable during his time in California. 

Patrick Mahomes: has the X factor that Jimmy Garoppolo lacks

Garoppolo represents the top of the second tier in the NFL, missing the X factor that players like Patrick Mahomes or Lamar Jackson display, but highly competent, composed, accurate and graceful. An upgrade for quite a few organisations out there, and a potential missing piece for contenders with solid all-round rosters but mediocre quarterbacks. 

The plan was to let Jimmy hold the fort as Alex Smith, a similar player, had done in Kansas City for one final year while his heir apparent (Mahomes) learned under him. But Garoppolo’s injury, which he sustained during the 2021 season, meant that his rehabilitation forced potential suitors to look elsewhere.

As the off-season wore on and different spots were filled, it became clear that Garoppolo’s chance at reinvention somewhere else weren’t just limited. They were non-existent. 

The 49ers initially couldn’t sell high, then couldn’t sell at all. He was destined for a season on the sidelines, attention on him fading all the while. His only hope seemed to revolve around a contending team suffering an injury to their quarterback and coughing up for a safe pair of hands. Few projected the contending team to be his own. 

Does Lance's injury help or hinder the 49ers?

Many have suggested that Garoppolo gives San Francisco a better chance of winning the Super Bowl this year. This is logical, and probably true, as Lance’s limited sample size of professional ball games gave us few clues as to his championship credentials. He was more likely a work in progress, a higher ceiling than his predecessors, the suggestion of the X factor edge but raw and untested. 

The opportunity for Garoppolo was simultaneously, and paradoxically, both warming and jarring. Only the coldest of hearts wouldn’t find joy in his redemption tale after he was cast aside in the brutal way that the NFL typically does with players - even the best. But the juxtaposition of that opportunity coming from a horrific injury to a teammate is impossible to overlook as Lance is now propelled into a future that is riddled with doubt and ambiguity. 

There’s every chance that Garoppolo now injects an abandon and a fearlessness into his game, something that possibly held him back before. Taking chances, calculated risks, leveraging the free hit he has. Worst case, he parlays this into a big new contract elsewhere, far greater an opportunity and paycheck than he would have been able to secure as the tablet carrying QB2 for the duration of the season. Best case? He takes his team to the promised land, leaves as a hero with a ring, and significantly enhances that contract. 

His first full start of the season comes against the struggling Denver Broncos this weekend, and on paper it’s a good landing spot given the offensive dysfunction currently emanating from Mile High. 

This has been overplayed, in terms of the long-term prognosis for Russell Wilson’s new charges anyway. He’ll find a cohesive slipstream, and Nathaniel Hackett, a fellow newbie in Denver, will find his groove. But, right now, the formidable San Francisco defence that is led by the imperious Nick Bosa will be licking their chops to get stuck into the Hackett hesitancy. And that could be another example of the right time and right place for Jimmy G.