• Here’s the reality of the Jimmy Garoppolo situation—the timing of his shoulder surgery made it awkward, and weird, and left things undone with the 49ers with less than two weeks left until the opener. So here we are with Garoppolo mostly healthy, and having spent the summer in semi-exile from his teammates, and now headed back into a season with them and a new, restructured contract.
The details on Garoppolo’s contract are relatively straightforward. He was set to make $24.2 million in base salary with $800,000 available in per-game roster bonuses. Those numbers are now knocked down to $6.5 million and $500,000, respectively, with Garoppolo having the ability to make $8.45 million of it back in play-time incentives. Which essentially knocks his base down from starter to backup money, and accounts for the fact that the per-game roster bonuses will likely come just for dressing for games, rather than starting them.
Garoppolo also has, and this is key, no-trade and no-tag provisions (we’ll get to those here in a little bit).
And as for why he’d do this deal, well, there are a few reasons.
The first one relates to the shoulder. He had the surgery in late February on his throwing shoulder. So not only would it have been a leap of faith for a team to trade for him at the outset of the league year in March, when there were the most open spots, such a team would also be signing up for its new starting quarterback to miss all of the spring and part of the summer, while only having a year left on the contract. That’s a lot to consider, and makes this situation markedly different than if he’d been able to get back June 1 for part of OTAs (which may have been the case with a January surgery) and mandatory minicamp.
For that reason, an opportunity to start elsewhere simply hadn’t materialized. In March, there were healthier options out there for quarterback-needy teams. By August, all the seats out there had been filled. And the Niners’ hope that there’d be a change to someone else’s quarterback situation—to create the need for a trade—never happened.
The second reason for Garoppolo to do this restructure is financial. The Niners held the cards. They could hold onto him until next Tuesday with no financial penalty, and they could hold onto him until next Saturday if they were willing to cut him a $1.34 million game check for Week 1. Thirteen of the NFL’s 32 teams have less than $10 million in cap space. All but four have less than $20 million. Simply put, there was no assurance that he’d get even close to his new $6.5 million base salary if he was out on the market at the beginning of September.
The third reason is there is mutual benefit for Garoppolo and the Niners. If Trey Lance gets nicked up or if he struggles, Garoppolo will get a good chance to showcase his ability in an offense with players he’s familiar with, which should help his value next year. And if someone else goes through a quarterback injury, suddenly the Niners could have a desperate suitor to work a trade—and Garoppolo, at that point, could wield his no-trade clause not just to dictate his destination, but also maybe to renegotiate his contract again. The no-tag clause ensures he can get to free agency, which would be another leverage point in a potential trade scenario.
So in the end this is far from an ideal outcome. The Niners wanted two second-rounders for Garoppolo (the price they got for Alex Smith nine years ago) when their season ended in January, not knowing what lay ahead, and they’ll probably never get that for him (barring a team getting wild with desperation). But if you look closely, you can see why this wound up being the right conclusion for everyone involved.
• Financials are a big part of tomorrow, of course. Cap compliance changes, slightly, after you get past the cutdown to 53—before the cut, only the top 51 cap figures are counted toward the limit; after the cut, all 53 go into the equation. And more important, teams are a lot closer to locking in what they’ll have to operate with through the season, as it relates to their ability to churn the roster or pull off trades. So here, then, are the 13 teams that are within $10 million of the limit as it stood Monday morning (per the NFL’s internal report).
1) 49ers: $2.91M
2) Giants: $5.02M
3) Jets: $5.23M
4) Patriots: $5.96M
5) Rams: $8.05M
6) Ravens: $8.61M
7) Chiefs: $8.84M
8) Eagles: $9.09M
9) Steelers: $9.21M
10) Vikings: $9.41M
11) Bucs: $9.55M
12) Lions: $9.64M
13) Texans: $9.67M
So you could see those teams maneuver to create a little more breathing room. On the flip side, the Browns ($48.05M), Raiders ($20.76M), Cowboys ($20.52M) and Panthers ($20.35M) are swimming in space, though Cleveland is likely to roll over a good chunk of what it’s got this year to next year to manage Deshaun Watson’s $54.99 million cap charge in 2023.
• Obviously, this also illustrates that doing Watson’s contract the way they did, while common for NFL teams, wasn’t necessary for the Browns. Generally, a small cap number and big bonus in Year 1 of a mega-contract is to navigate a tight cap situation in that season. And since Cleveland’s cap situation isn’t exactly tight, obviously, there was not a huge need to use this well-worn cap mechanism.
Which leaves contractually protecting Watson against a suspension as the only real reason for the Browns to do the deal the way they did.
