In a fairly shocking development, the 49ers traded one of their two 2nd round picks for the services of one Jimmy Garappolo, the backup QB for the Super Bowl champion New England Patriots.  This trade is stunning to me as it shows a lot of things behind the thinking of Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch. This isn’t a ‘win now’ kind of trade, but it is a look at the future of the quarterback spot.

Jimmy G is not a fairly well- known commodity, but he is young and his small body of work (17 games) he’s has 5 TDs and 0 picks in pretty much nothing but garbage time. His one shot when Tom Terrific cooled his heels for deflated balls he beat the Cardinals, and got hurt while throwing for 234 against the Dolphins.

Garoppolo is on the last year of his deal, so you have to think that this is basically a try-out for him for a big deal here. I’m not sure if this changes the thinking around Kirk Cousins but to me it throws a little shade on the supposed love affair between Kirk and Kyle.

This could be a determining factor on the 1st round pick next year as well. They could conceivably forego a QB in the draft and instead go elsewhere if Jimmy Garoppolo works out and they pay him the proverbial king’s ransom.

AS I said, this isn’t a ‘win now’ kind of thing, but it also shows that these guys aren’t very happy with the state of the QBing so far. Hoyer was let go, and he was originally part of the trade, but the Pats would have lost a compensatory  pick apparently, so here we sit. With a new possible future QB and a shitload of questions that will be answered come December 31st.

As a postscript, Jimmy won’t play this weekend against the Cards.