The 49ers face less of a controversy and more of an enigma to the quarterback, with the 2021 league year set to begin. Influenced instability in the modern NFL is a possible death knell for front offices and coaching staff and makes it impossible to win a Super Bowl. Instability has defined the 49ers as a full-back since head coach Kyle Shanahan took over in 2017, and the team needs to figure out soon if they want to fight for the Super Bowls on a regular basis. To better find this stability, you should take a page from the team’s Philadelphia Eagles book.
At first glance, pursuing the Eagles in anything does not seem like a great idea, given the turmoil the franchise has suffered since winning the Super Bowl in 2017. However, they woke up in the last off-season in -a similar position, 49ers are this year.
Defender Carson Wentz played MVP football in 2017 during his second season in the NFL. He tore up his ACL late that year and was not the same player in 2018 or 2019. While Wentz had a massive payday, the Eagles didn’t unnecessarily pull their wagon to the former No. 1 overall pick. Instead, they acknowledged that his game had deteriorated and used a second-round pick on defender Jalen Hurts in the 2020 draft.
This is the route that San Francisco must follow in this year’s project, regardless of their feelings for Garoppolo. At best, he is a starter capable of bringing a team into a Super Bowl. In the worst case it is unavailable. The latter scenario requires a more robust backup option than Nick Mullens or CJ Beathard.
Hurts ended four games at the end of the year for the Eagles and showed enough promise that Philadelphia would be willing to eat a $ 33.8 million hit to move Wentz to a pair of drafts this season. Chances are that we will see Philadelphia using another high selection on a defender this year to compete with Hurts and offer them more than one starting level player below center.
Given the importance of the position of defender, it is worth using the options from Day 1 or 2 on signal callers once or twice every few years until an elite talent appears.
The old saying “if you have two defenders you don’t have defenders” can try to withdraw its head, but the phrase doesn’t apply right here. It works if a team has two defenders to choose from, because they are both bad. It does not fit a team with several high quality players in position.
Having two defenders who can start and help a team win is a significant advantage, given the frequency of injuries in the NFL. Garoppolo has specifically missed 23 of the last 48 games of the 49ers regular season. Their reserve situation this year essentially meant that the second high sprain of Garoppolo’s ankle ended the season. Maybe it wouldn’t have happened if he had kept a very well-prepared defender as a backup.
In addition, a second defender who is talented enough to win games in the NFL could become an asset on the line. Consider how the 49ers purchased Garoppolo. It was a second-round pick with two NFL starts under the belt and was split for a second-round pick. If Philadelphia draws a defender in 2021 and he becomes the starter, Hurts becomes a valuable commercial chip for the Eagles.
The 49ers have gone through four starting defenders since Shanahan took over as head coach four seasons ago. They have a chance in this off-season to reset their defender’s room with Mullens and Beathard, both of whom will hit the free agency. He has to do this with either a Day 1 or a Day 2 choice, which I believe in. Then he has to do it again in 2022 if he decides to break up with Garoppolo before the project.
This is the process you should repeat until they have a player that I think can help them compete for the Super Bowls on a regular basis, and even then it is worth having a higher quality backup than a player with Mullens ceiling.
There aren’t too many costs for finding a long-term answer to the quarterback, and the Eagles showed last year why it’s important to have contingency plans on the list, even if they may already have a franchise signal caller. 49ers have less certainty about their QB and less financial commitment to this position. It may be unorthodox and counterintuitive, but San Francisco should begin the process of adding high-quality players under the center until they find the long-term stability they have lacked in recent years.