49ers ready for start of new league year

The 49ers are ready for the official start of free agency.

With a deadline of 1:00 p.m. looming to get under the salary cap, San Francisco restructured the contracts of Arik Armstead and George Kittle. These moves saved the 49ers $18.756 million in cap space for 2022.

San Francisco now has roughly $9 million in cap space to work with once the tenders to their exclusive and restricted free agents become official. These savings will go towards the new contracts of free-agent acquisitions Charvarius Ward and Oren Burks.

The 49ers still have additional moves to make. Jimmie Ward and Emmanuel Moseley are entering the final year of their current contracts. Ward has a cap hit of $12.94 million, Moseley is $6.56 million. If both players are in the long-term plans of San Francisco, it makes sense to get new deals in place now to lower their cap hit for 2022.

That leads us to the contract of the player most 49ers fans are talking about, James Garoppolo.

A week ago, it appeared Garoppolo would be traded by the 1:00 deadline. The moves above have provided San Francisco extra time to get the deal they want in return for the quarterback.

To this point, none of the losses suffered by the 49ers in free agency have been due to Garoppolo’s contract still being on the books. They were not going to give Laken Tomlinson $13 million or D.J. Jones $10 million; this is not how they do business.

Time is starting to run out on San Francisco, however. They will need to make a move on Garoppolo soon to make any additional signings.

Over the last year, people have been screaming about Garoppolo. Instead of listening, the 49ers have continued to work their plan. This blueprint led San Francisco to the doorstep of its second Super Bowl trip in three seasons, and they keep working it.

This article has 7 Comments

  1. Somewhat disagree on the blueprint. In my opinion signing Alex Mack instead of drafting Creed Humphrey, drafting Aaron Banks instead of signing Thuney, Turner, or Scherff may have been the reason the 49ers didn’t make it to another Super bowl last year. 49ers rushed 20 times for 50 yards in the NFC Championship Game. 49ers were held to 16 1st downs in that game. Better O-line play and the 49ers likely make the Super Bowl. And now the 49ers look poised to make the same exact mistake. Letting Tomlinson go and not doing anything in Free Agency to upgrade the O-line is mind boggling to me. You have a young franchise QB with a below average right side of the o-line and major question marks at Center and LG. How is that justifiable for another year?

    1. 100% agree. And that continued Mack commitment at center still goes under the radar. It was great to stabilize the position when we signed him, but he is now way past overdue to retire. He hasn’t been very effective as a blocker in the role, but at least he’s good at identifying and vocalizing protection schemes to the rest of the line.

      1. In addition to calling out protection screens he’s rated as an average blocker and especially good in the run game which is what they prefer. Of course they need to have a future replacement for him.

  2. If Trust Fund Jed isn’t willing to trade for Watson he should sell the team. Watson wants to play here and supposedly we aren’t interested because we don’t actually want to win. Trust Fund Jed proved that when he cut Kaepernick. He just wants to pad his wallet and all our stupid fans continue to drink the kool aid and donate to his bank account. Wake up people!

    1. If you had a clue, you’d know that lynch and Shanahan make the football decisions. Not York and not Paraag

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