San Francisco 49ers: Sam Darnold and other QBs to target ASAP

The San Francisco 49ers may need to make another bold move for a QB.

The reigning NFC Champion San Francisco 49ers find themselves in last place in the NFC West heading into week six of the NFL season with a 2-3 record and a lot of uncertainty at the quarterback position.

Jimmy Garoppolo has proven to be a decent starting quarterback in the NFL when he’s healthy, but he has struggled badly to do that — stay healthy — for all but two of the seasons he’s played in San Francisco since he started getting substantial playing time in 2016 (with New England).

In the 2017 season, the 49ers sort of had Garoppolo on ice until late in the year when he appeared in six games and started five, but in 2016 he suffered a torn ligament in his shoulder, then suffered a season-ending knee injury in 2018.

In 2020, he’s been dealing with an ankle injury and even after he was cleared by team doctors, he didn’t look like himself against the Miami Dolphins and played horribly. He completed just 7-of-17 passes for 77 yards with no touchdowns and two interceptions.

Frankly, the 49ers could upgrade on Garoppolo and even as well as he played in 2019 helping get them to the Super Bowl, that has been true for some time.

With a 2-3 start to the season and every team in the NFC West looking much better in 2020 than they were a season ago, the time could finally be here for San Francisco to upgrade their quarterback position.

Financially, it would make some sense after this season to move on from Garoppolo. He has a salary cap number of $26.9 million with a dead cap hit of just $2.8 million. Freeing up over $24 million in cap space sounds good on paper, but the 49ers would obviously have to have some kind of alternative in mind.

Luckily for Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch, there should be a number of quarterbacks — young and old — who could present long-term upgrades over Garoppolo.

Let’s take a look through some of the options.