What Up Goodell.......OHH??.... WELL fukk YOU THEN PUNK! OFFICIAL 2020 49ERS SEASON THREAD!
- Thread starter Rekkapryde
- Start date
yseJ
Empire strikes back
they also havent done live tackling pretty much until last week of practice this year, but I think most teams have done the same
Sounds like a curseMan how much longer is the football Gods finna punish up for not bringing Kaep back?
We already paid out debt for how we mishandled the TO situation. At some point we gotta be giving a break
hasty 100% better get the bulk of the carries over Jet. He looked way more explosive. Keep Jet in for passing downs if you want but Hasty should be getting the bulk of the work on 1st and 2nd
B90X
All Star
It’ll probably be Jeff Wilson Jr. that gets the bulk of the carries if Coleman isn’t back. Hasty looked good but I would be weary giving him the bulk of the carries simply because he’s a smaller back.
Mortal1
Superstar
Kyle was saying Wilson may not play this week but we'll see by Wednesday or Thursday.
jwonder
Superstar
He's stocky though. Reminds me of a faster Donta Freeman. He's clearly a better back than McKinnon. Kyle unfortunately doesn't have a modern mind. It's like his dad is coaching us. He was pretty stubborn at first also.
feelosofer
#ninergang
Almost every time I see Jeff Wilson get the ball he does something positive and he's explosive low key. He needs the ball more.
jwonder
Superstar
Both need to play tbh. McKinnon should be demoted to just kick returns and punts. Only put him in the offense to line up as WR to throw the defense off. What a waste of a signing. McKinnon, Alexander and Ford were the dumbest signings. They have to be up there for the worst in Niner history.
Dat916nigga
Superstar
Long but good read from Tim Kawakami on the injury news from yesterday
The KO punch to the season and a Jimmy Garoppolo reset on the 49ers Panic Meter
By Tim Kawakami 2h ago
20
In potentially the last edition of the 49ers’ 2020 Panic Meter, with 10 representing “this might be endurable as long as the Seahawks don’t win it and OK, maybe not the Chiefs, either” and 1 representing “the playoffs are still realistic as long as the Jets are on the schedule 10 more times” … we have kept it at a steady 9.5 even after Sunday’s buoyant victory over the Rams.
It actually probably should be at 10, but 9.5 seems like a good way to end this, not quite all the way there for a team that just couldn’t get started in the season after losing the Super Bowl. It still probably should be at 10.
You know why. The 49ers know why. Kyle Shanahan’s steely, stiff-upper-lip countenance during Monday’s media Zoom call indicated that he knew precisely why this seemed to be the moment that all the doors slammed shut, all the light was cut and all the 49ers’ best intentions and best moments from Sunday were reduced to side notes.
Monday’s news that tailback Raheem Mostert’s high ankle sprain (yes, another one of those) was likely to keep him out for several weeks, right in the heart of the 49ers’ toughest stretch of games, very much felt like the last straw. It was, after an accumulation of body shots and early-round staggerings, the last big uppercut that knocked the fighter to the canvas. It was the grand, cosmic signal that even after Sunday’s momentary triumph, it just isn’t going to happen in 2020 for the 49ers.
They fought against the signs after they were relatively healthy and still lost at home to Arizona in Week 1. They fought against it after Nick Bosa and Solomon Thomas were lost for the season during Week 2’s victory over the Jets in New Jersey. They fought against it while George Kittle, Richard Sherman, Jimmy Garoppolo, Dee Ford, Jordan Reed, Deebo Samuel, Mostert and many others were sidelined for multiple weeks. The 49ers fought against it after their humiliating home loss to Miami two weekends ago and they showed their battling spirit by pushing around the Rams on Sunday to get to 3-3 and within reach of viable playoff contention.
But Monday was the true breaking point. On Monday, there was the news about Mostert, whose return Sunday from a previous knee injury made the 49ers offense look balanced and forceful again for a half. There was also word that starting center Ben Garland is also likely headed to IR and that Trent Williams and Jaquiski Tartt are injury question marks, too. Sherman, Reed and Ford are still on IR.
The 49ers’ spirit is willing. That was more than obvious on Sunday and probably will continue to be obvious throughout the long months of this season. They won’t collapse. They will maintain their pride. They still have some very good players and they still are coached extremely well.
But they just don’t have enough healthy bodies, which was why the 49ers’ three losses in the first five weeks weighed so heavily so early in the season. They had to build up a buffer early to get through this tough stretch of games (and brace for potential injuries) and instead they lost many of their top players and they lost too many games. And now the compounding issues are just too much to realistically believe that they can pick off six more wins and get into playoff contention.
So … what’s left for this season? Well, probably no more Panic Meters, which probably breaks nobody’s heart. You can’t measure the panic if the organization and fan base are done with the pain and assigning of blame and have moved on to acceptance and thoughts about the future beyond 2020.
Even if the 49ers win in New England on Sunday, I don’t think anybody will be penciling them in as a top NFC playoff seed or Super Bowl contender. Not even the wildest-eyed members of the 49ers Faithful could do that. It’s time to consider more practical issues and goals, such as:
Keep together as a team, even if the losses don’t look good and maybe one or two of them are as bad as the Dolphins game. There shouldn’t be much concern about this one right now. If the 49ers were going to fall apart in a locker-room conflagration, it would’ve started last weekend and instead they seemed more tightly bound than ever.
The 49ers lost Joe Staley and DeForest Buckner last offseason, so maybe it took some time for the new leadership structure to coalesce, especially with Sherman sidelined. But Kittle’s voice has been heard loud and clear and guys like Garoppolo, Williams, Fred Warner, Arik Armstead and Mike McGlinchey are beside him. It doesn’t mean the 49ers are going to play at max level the rest of the season, but they are likely to hold together as a group and that is very important when you start to think about 2021.
The team’s top players know that they had something special in 2019 and a lot of it is still here. It’s just been wounded. They need to heal. There’s no reason to bust it up over one bad-moon season. There’s no reason to distrust Shanahan and the coaching staff or Lynch and the personnel group. Some decisions need to be made before the start of the 2021 season, but everything points to most of these guys coming back next year and giving it another shot. There aren’t many better spots or better rosters and I think there should and will be recurring signs of this throughout 2020, even if they come in the middle of a bunch of losses.
By the way, I don’t think trading a bunch of solid veterans at next week’s trade deadline for some middle-round draft picks would be accepted very happily in the 49ers’ locker room. And I don’t expect that to happen. Maybe some minor giveaways (Ahkello Witherspoon for anything Lynch can get, for instance), but nothing that would send a ripple through the roster. The 49ers are not in a fire-sale position. They’re in a pause.
Continue to believe in Shanahan and Robert Saleh’s systems. Again, I don’t think there are a lot of worries about this one.
I really believe that Shanahan showed some of his best coaching chops in 2017, when he inherited a lousy offensive roster that he still managed to move up and down the field against far superior opponents. The 49ers surely can do this through the rest of this season and really start to show the league what Shanahan can do with Brandon Aiyuk.
Saleh’s defense looked bad when he didn’t have a lot of talent and then incredible when he had Bosa, Ford and other stars. Through it all, the players have had absolute faith in Saleh and his assistants. And if Javon Kinlaw turns into a very good defensive tackle by the end of this season and the 49ers put together a cornerback group that can consistently attack receivers the way Jason Verrett and Emmanuel Moseley did on Sunday, the 49ers will have taken some large steps already for 2021.
Consolidate the Garoppolo era. Until Garoppolo wins a Super Bowl or an MVP or perhaps both, he’s just going to be one of those quarterbacks who gets far too much praise when he plays well and far, far too much knee-jerk criticism when he doesn’t. But that’s what happens when you land a $137.5 million contract before you’ve played a full season, you blow out an ACL a few months later and eventually you don’t look so great at the end of a Super Bowl loss.
And hey, there’s a chance that Shanahan and Lynch, just like they did last offseason, evaluate Garoppolo next offseason and this time decide they can do better. All smart teams have to evaluate everything. Nobody’s untouchable here. Shanahan and Lynch have never denied that they do this for every player and especially the QB.
But there’s only a tiny chance that Shanahan and Lynch even seriously consider moving from Garoppolo next spring. They had their best shot to do it last spring, when Tom Brady was available (and then they could’ve plotted to acquire Kirk Cousins in 2021 or 2022), but Shanahan and Lynch stuck with Garoppolo for some very solid reasons. I think they will do that again.
I think Shanahan and Lynch know it’s best for the 49ers for Garoppolo to be locked into place, to have earned their trust and commitment with good leadership, steady presence and, most importantly, very solid QB play. The 49ers don’t want to start playing QB roulette. The locker room doesn’t want a QB roulette. And who says the 49ers could absolutely find a better option than Garoppolo? I don’t know that they could; meanwhile, these days Cousins doesn’t look like much of a happy option at all.
If Garoppolo can’t stay healthy (not his fault, I know; still part of the evaluation) or if he isn’t any good through the rest of this season, yes, the 49ers would have to take a hard look at their QB future. But if they’re not going to be lousy enough to earn a top-three pick next April, and judging by that Rams victory, it seems clear that they will not, I don’t see how the 49ers land a better QB than Garoppolo. I think Shanahan and Lynch already believe that.
They just need Garoppolo to fulfill that trust. They don’t need him to be a superstar. Shanahan can scheme up shovel passes to Samuel and blitz-beating passes to Kittle and the 49ers will always run the ball. For the rest of 2020, the 49ers just need Garoppolo to keep things calm and sensible and maybe start to complete a few more downfield passes. They need him to look like the QB who won those high-stakes games last season and could win many more again at some point beyond 2020.
There will be no need for panic if these things happen. The season won’t be good, but there won’t and shouldn’t be much panic at all.
By Tim Kawakami 2h ago
In potentially the last edition of the 49ers’ 2020 Panic Meter, with 10 representing “this might be endurable as long as the Seahawks don’t win it and OK, maybe not the Chiefs, either” and 1 representing “the playoffs are still realistic as long as the Jets are on the schedule 10 more times” … we have kept it at a steady 9.5 even after Sunday’s buoyant victory over the Rams.
It actually probably should be at 10, but 9.5 seems like a good way to end this, not quite all the way there for a team that just couldn’t get started in the season after losing the Super Bowl. It still probably should be at 10.
You know why. The 49ers know why. Kyle Shanahan’s steely, stiff-upper-lip countenance during Monday’s media Zoom call indicated that he knew precisely why this seemed to be the moment that all the doors slammed shut, all the light was cut and all the 49ers’ best intentions and best moments from Sunday were reduced to side notes.
Monday’s news that tailback Raheem Mostert’s high ankle sprain (yes, another one of those) was likely to keep him out for several weeks, right in the heart of the 49ers’ toughest stretch of games, very much felt like the last straw. It was, after an accumulation of body shots and early-round staggerings, the last big uppercut that knocked the fighter to the canvas. It was the grand, cosmic signal that even after Sunday’s momentary triumph, it just isn’t going to happen in 2020 for the 49ers.
They fought against the signs after they were relatively healthy and still lost at home to Arizona in Week 1. They fought against it after Nick Bosa and Solomon Thomas were lost for the season during Week 2’s victory over the Jets in New Jersey. They fought against it while George Kittle, Richard Sherman, Jimmy Garoppolo, Dee Ford, Jordan Reed, Deebo Samuel, Mostert and many others were sidelined for multiple weeks. The 49ers fought against it after their humiliating home loss to Miami two weekends ago and they showed their battling spirit by pushing around the Rams on Sunday to get to 3-3 and within reach of viable playoff contention.
But Monday was the true breaking point. On Monday, there was the news about Mostert, whose return Sunday from a previous knee injury made the 49ers offense look balanced and forceful again for a half. There was also word that starting center Ben Garland is also likely headed to IR and that Trent Williams and Jaquiski Tartt are injury question marks, too. Sherman, Reed and Ford are still on IR.
The 49ers’ spirit is willing. That was more than obvious on Sunday and probably will continue to be obvious throughout the long months of this season. They won’t collapse. They will maintain their pride. They still have some very good players and they still are coached extremely well.
But they just don’t have enough healthy bodies, which was why the 49ers’ three losses in the first five weeks weighed so heavily so early in the season. They had to build up a buffer early to get through this tough stretch of games (and brace for potential injuries) and instead they lost many of their top players and they lost too many games. And now the compounding issues are just too much to realistically believe that they can pick off six more wins and get into playoff contention.
So … what’s left for this season? Well, probably no more Panic Meters, which probably breaks nobody’s heart. You can’t measure the panic if the organization and fan base are done with the pain and assigning of blame and have moved on to acceptance and thoughts about the future beyond 2020.
Even if the 49ers win in New England on Sunday, I don’t think anybody will be penciling them in as a top NFC playoff seed or Super Bowl contender. Not even the wildest-eyed members of the 49ers Faithful could do that. It’s time to consider more practical issues and goals, such as:
Keep together as a team, even if the losses don’t look good and maybe one or two of them are as bad as the Dolphins game. There shouldn’t be much concern about this one right now. If the 49ers were going to fall apart in a locker-room conflagration, it would’ve started last weekend and instead they seemed more tightly bound than ever.
The 49ers lost Joe Staley and DeForest Buckner last offseason, so maybe it took some time for the new leadership structure to coalesce, especially with Sherman sidelined. But Kittle’s voice has been heard loud and clear and guys like Garoppolo, Williams, Fred Warner, Arik Armstead and Mike McGlinchey are beside him. It doesn’t mean the 49ers are going to play at max level the rest of the season, but they are likely to hold together as a group and that is very important when you start to think about 2021.
The team’s top players know that they had something special in 2019 and a lot of it is still here. It’s just been wounded. They need to heal. There’s no reason to bust it up over one bad-moon season. There’s no reason to distrust Shanahan and the coaching staff or Lynch and the personnel group. Some decisions need to be made before the start of the 2021 season, but everything points to most of these guys coming back next year and giving it another shot. There aren’t many better spots or better rosters and I think there should and will be recurring signs of this throughout 2020, even if they come in the middle of a bunch of losses.
By the way, I don’t think trading a bunch of solid veterans at next week’s trade deadline for some middle-round draft picks would be accepted very happily in the 49ers’ locker room. And I don’t expect that to happen. Maybe some minor giveaways (Ahkello Witherspoon for anything Lynch can get, for instance), but nothing that would send a ripple through the roster. The 49ers are not in a fire-sale position. They’re in a pause.
Continue to believe in Shanahan and Robert Saleh’s systems. Again, I don’t think there are a lot of worries about this one.
I really believe that Shanahan showed some of his best coaching chops in 2017, when he inherited a lousy offensive roster that he still managed to move up and down the field against far superior opponents. The 49ers surely can do this through the rest of this season and really start to show the league what Shanahan can do with Brandon Aiyuk.
Saleh’s defense looked bad when he didn’t have a lot of talent and then incredible when he had Bosa, Ford and other stars. Through it all, the players have had absolute faith in Saleh and his assistants. And if Javon Kinlaw turns into a very good defensive tackle by the end of this season and the 49ers put together a cornerback group that can consistently attack receivers the way Jason Verrett and Emmanuel Moseley did on Sunday, the 49ers will have taken some large steps already for 2021.
Consolidate the Garoppolo era. Until Garoppolo wins a Super Bowl or an MVP or perhaps both, he’s just going to be one of those quarterbacks who gets far too much praise when he plays well and far, far too much knee-jerk criticism when he doesn’t. But that’s what happens when you land a $137.5 million contract before you’ve played a full season, you blow out an ACL a few months later and eventually you don’t look so great at the end of a Super Bowl loss.
And hey, there’s a chance that Shanahan and Lynch, just like they did last offseason, evaluate Garoppolo next offseason and this time decide they can do better. All smart teams have to evaluate everything. Nobody’s untouchable here. Shanahan and Lynch have never denied that they do this for every player and especially the QB.
But there’s only a tiny chance that Shanahan and Lynch even seriously consider moving from Garoppolo next spring. They had their best shot to do it last spring, when Tom Brady was available (and then they could’ve plotted to acquire Kirk Cousins in 2021 or 2022), but Shanahan and Lynch stuck with Garoppolo for some very solid reasons. I think they will do that again.
I think Shanahan and Lynch know it’s best for the 49ers for Garoppolo to be locked into place, to have earned their trust and commitment with good leadership, steady presence and, most importantly, very solid QB play. The 49ers don’t want to start playing QB roulette. The locker room doesn’t want a QB roulette. And who says the 49ers could absolutely find a better option than Garoppolo? I don’t know that they could; meanwhile, these days Cousins doesn’t look like much of a happy option at all.
If Garoppolo can’t stay healthy (not his fault, I know; still part of the evaluation) or if he isn’t any good through the rest of this season, yes, the 49ers would have to take a hard look at their QB future. But if they’re not going to be lousy enough to earn a top-three pick next April, and judging by that Rams victory, it seems clear that they will not, I don’t see how the 49ers land a better QB than Garoppolo. I think Shanahan and Lynch already believe that.
They just need Garoppolo to fulfill that trust. They don’t need him to be a superstar. Shanahan can scheme up shovel passes to Samuel and blitz-beating passes to Kittle and the 49ers will always run the ball. For the rest of 2020, the 49ers just need Garoppolo to keep things calm and sensible and maybe start to complete a few more downfield passes. They need him to look like the QB who won those high-stakes games last season and could win many more again at some point beyond 2020.
There will be no need for panic if these things happen. The season won’t be good, but there won’t and shouldn’t be much panic at all.
jwonder
Superstar
Amazing what can happen when the line blocks and you're not injured.
Last edited:
Dat916nigga
Superstar
jwonder
Superstar
I never understood the point of long winded sports articles. Get to the god damn point already.Long but good read from Tim Kawakami on the injury news from yesterday
The KO punch to the season and a Jimmy Garoppolo reset on the 49ers Panic Meter
By Tim Kawakami 2h ago20
In potentially the last edition of the 49ers’ 2020 Panic Meter, with 10 representing “this might be endurable as long as the Seahawks don’t win it and OK, maybe not the Chiefs, either” and 1 representing “the playoffs are still realistic as long as the Jets are on the schedule 10 more times” … we have kept it at a steady 9.5 even after Sunday’s buoyant victory over the Rams.
It actually probably should be at 10, but 9.5 seems like a good way to end this, not quite all the way there for a team that just couldn’t get started in the season after losing the Super Bowl. It still probably should be at 10.
You know why. The 49ers know why. Kyle Shanahan’s steely, stiff-upper-lip countenance during Monday’s media Zoom call indicated that he knew precisely why this seemed to be the moment that all the doors slammed shut, all the light was cut and all the 49ers’ best intentions and best moments from Sunday were reduced to side notes.
Monday’s news that tailback Raheem Mostert’s high ankle sprain (yes, another one of those) was likely to keep him out for several weeks, right in the heart of the 49ers’ toughest stretch of games, very much felt like the last straw. It was, after an accumulation of body shots and early-round staggerings, the last big uppercut that knocked the fighter to the canvas. It was the grand, cosmic signal that even after Sunday’s momentary triumph, it just isn’t going to happen in 2020 for the 49ers.
They fought against the signs after they were relatively healthy and still lost at home to Arizona in Week 1. They fought against it after Nick Bosa and Solomon Thomas were lost for the season during Week 2’s victory over the Jets in New Jersey. They fought against it while George Kittle, Richard Sherman, Jimmy Garoppolo, Dee Ford, Jordan Reed, Deebo Samuel, Mostert and many others were sidelined for multiple weeks. The 49ers fought against it after their humiliating home loss to Miami two weekends ago and they showed their battling spirit by pushing around the Rams on Sunday to get to 3-3 and within reach of viable playoff contention.
But Monday was the true breaking point. On Monday, there was the news about Mostert, whose return Sunday from a previous knee injury made the 49ers offense look balanced and forceful again for a half. There was also word that starting center Ben Garland is also likely headed to IR and that Trent Williams and Jaquiski Tartt are injury question marks, too. Sherman, Reed and Ford are still on IR.
The 49ers’ spirit is willing. That was more than obvious on Sunday and probably will continue to be obvious throughout the long months of this season. They won’t collapse. They will maintain their pride. They still have some very good players and they still are coached extremely well.
But they just don’t have enough healthy bodies, which was why the 49ers’ three losses in the first five weeks weighed so heavily so early in the season. They had to build up a buffer early to get through this tough stretch of games (and brace for potential injuries) and instead they lost many of their top players and they lost too many games. And now the compounding issues are just too much to realistically believe that they can pick off six more wins and get into playoff contention.
So … what’s left for this season? Well, probably no more Panic Meters, which probably breaks nobody’s heart. You can’t measure the panic if the organization and fan base are done with the pain and assigning of blame and have moved on to acceptance and thoughts about the future beyond 2020.
Even if the 49ers win in New England on Sunday, I don’t think anybody will be penciling them in as a top NFC playoff seed or Super Bowl contender. Not even the wildest-eyed members of the 49ers Faithful could do that. It’s time to consider more practical issues and goals, such as:
Keep together as a team, even if the losses don’t look good and maybe one or two of them are as bad as the Dolphins game. There shouldn’t be much concern about this one right now. If the 49ers were going to fall apart in a locker-room conflagration, it would’ve started last weekend and instead they seemed more tightly bound than ever.
The 49ers lost Joe Staley and DeForest Buckner last offseason, so maybe it took some time for the new leadership structure to coalesce, especially with Sherman sidelined. But Kittle’s voice has been heard loud and clear and guys like Garoppolo, Williams, Fred Warner, Arik Armstead and Mike McGlinchey are beside him. It doesn’t mean the 49ers are going to play at max level the rest of the season, but they are likely to hold together as a group and that is very important when you start to think about 2021.
The team’s top players know that they had something special in 2019 and a lot of it is still here. It’s just been wounded. They need to heal. There’s no reason to bust it up over one bad-moon season. There’s no reason to distrust Shanahan and the coaching staff or Lynch and the personnel group. Some decisions need to be made before the start of the 2021 season, but everything points to most of these guys coming back next year and giving it another shot. There aren’t many better spots or better rosters and I think there should and will be recurring signs of this throughout 2020, even if they come in the middle of a bunch of losses.
By the way, I don’t think trading a bunch of solid veterans at next week’s trade deadline for some middle-round draft picks would be accepted very happily in the 49ers’ locker room. And I don’t expect that to happen. Maybe some minor giveaways (Ahkello Witherspoon for anything Lynch can get, for instance), but nothing that would send a ripple through the roster. The 49ers are not in a fire-sale position. They’re in a pause.
Continue to believe in Shanahan and Robert Saleh’s systems. Again, I don’t think there are a lot of worries about this one.
I really believe that Shanahan showed some of his best coaching chops in 2017, when he inherited a lousy offensive roster that he still managed to move up and down the field against far superior opponents. The 49ers surely can do this through the rest of this season and really start to show the league what Shanahan can do with Brandon Aiyuk.
Saleh’s defense looked bad when he didn’t have a lot of talent and then incredible when he had Bosa, Ford and other stars. Through it all, the players have had absolute faith in Saleh and his assistants. And if Javon Kinlaw turns into a very good defensive tackle by the end of this season and the 49ers put together a cornerback group that can consistently attack receivers the way Jason Verrett and Emmanuel Moseley did on Sunday, the 49ers will have taken some large steps already for 2021.
Consolidate the Garoppolo era. Until Garoppolo wins a Super Bowl or an MVP or perhaps both, he’s just going to be one of those quarterbacks who gets far too much praise when he plays well and far, far too much knee-jerk criticism when he doesn’t. But that’s what happens when you land a $137.5 million contract before you’ve played a full season, you blow out an ACL a few months later and eventually you don’t look so great at the end of a Super Bowl loss.
And hey, there’s a chance that Shanahan and Lynch, just like they did last offseason, evaluate Garoppolo next offseason and this time decide they can do better. All smart teams have to evaluate everything. Nobody’s untouchable here. Shanahan and Lynch have never denied that they do this for every player and especially the QB.
But there’s only a tiny chance that Shanahan and Lynch even seriously consider moving from Garoppolo next spring. They had their best shot to do it last spring, when Tom Brady was available (and then they could’ve plotted to acquire Kirk Cousins in 2021 or 2022), but Shanahan and Lynch stuck with Garoppolo for some very solid reasons. I think they will do that again.
I think Shanahan and Lynch know it’s best for the 49ers for Garoppolo to be locked into place, to have earned their trust and commitment with good leadership, steady presence and, most importantly, very solid QB play. The 49ers don’t want to start playing QB roulette. The locker room doesn’t want a QB roulette. And who says the 49ers could absolutely find a better option than Garoppolo? I don’t know that they could; meanwhile, these days Cousins doesn’t look like much of a happy option at all.
If Garoppolo can’t stay healthy (not his fault, I know; still part of the evaluation) or if he isn’t any good through the rest of this season, yes, the 49ers would have to take a hard look at their QB future. But if they’re not going to be lousy enough to earn a top-three pick next April, and judging by that Rams victory, it seems clear that they will not, I don’t see how the 49ers land a better QB than Garoppolo. I think Shanahan and Lynch already believe that.
They just need Garoppolo to fulfill that trust. They don’t need him to be a superstar. Shanahan can scheme up shovel passes to Samuel and blitz-beating passes to Kittle and the 49ers will always run the ball. For the rest of 2020, the 49ers just need Garoppolo to keep things calm and sensible and maybe start to complete a few more downfield passes. They need him to look like the QB who won those high-stakes games last season and could win many more again at some point beyond 2020.
There will be no need for panic if these things happen. The season won’t be good, but there won’t and shouldn’t be much panic at all.
