49ers' Jimmy Garoppolo will 'let the chips fall where they may'

For the second consecutive spring, San Francisco 49ers veteran quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo finds his career in limbo. 

Last offseason, the 49ers traded to acquire the No. 3 pick in the 2021 NFL Draft and used that selection to grab signal-caller Trey Lance. Garoppolo did well to remain San Francisco's QB1 through summer workouts and the start of the season and stayed atop the depth chart, when healthy, all the way through the club's NFC Championship loss to the Los Angeles Rams. 

Garoppolo then underwent surgery in March to repair a torn capsule in his throwing shoulder and watched as a handful of teams added quarterbacks via trades and free agency. The 30-year-old admitted during a Thursday appearance on SiriusXM that 2021 "was a strange year" and that he doesn't "know if I’d wish that on anybody" but added he'll be ready for whatever comes next. 

"I'm not where I want to be yet, obviously the shoulder surgery went well, rehab's been going great, but it's a process," Garoppolo explained, according to Nick Shook of the NFL's website. "And I knew going into the surgery what it was going to take to get the shoulder back right, but we'll be throwing here soon, gotta keep going in the right direction. It's a long offseason, it's already been crazy with all the trades, guys going to different teams, whatever it is.

"I don't know, it's just one of those things where I'm just going to let the chips fall where they may and work my ass off like I always do, when you do that, good things will happen for you."

As Shook wrote, 49ers general manager John Lynch and CEO Jed York have suggested they'd rather have Garoppolo either compete with Lance or sit behind the 2021 rookie later this year than release Jimmy G if no team trades anything of value for his services.