Not to be outdone by a frenetic NBA trade deadline, the NFL sneaked in a blockbuster personnel move of its own Thursday.
The San Francisco 49ers, who haven’t had a long-term franchise quarterback since Steve Young, have lavished Jimmy Garoppolo with a whopping five-year, $137.5 million contract, per the NFL Network’s Mike Garafolo.
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Garoppolo, who was acquired from the New England Patriots in late October, will now officially be the face of a franchise that has fallen quite far from its lofty Super Bowl standards of the 1980s and ’90s.
The 49ers traded just a 2018 second-round pick to the Patriots for Garoppolo.
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If he is as good as his contract suggests, it will turn out to be an absolute heist of a deal.
While Garoppolo needed a few weeks to acclimate to a different playbook, once the 49ers inserted him as the starting quarterback, the results were impressive.
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In five starts, Garoppolo threw for 1,560 yards, seven touchdowns and five interceptions.
More importantly, the 49ers went 5-0 in those games.
The team was 1-10 in the 11 games prior to Garoppolo starting.
His new deal is officially the richest contract in NFL history on a per year basis, averaging an eye-popping $27.5 million per year.
Detroit Lions quarterback Matt Stafford was the previous record holder.
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The deal certainly comes with some risk for the 49ers. Garoppolo has only seven starts under his belt, which isn’t even half of an NFL season.
It’s a calculated risk to offer a quarterback nearly the same number of years on a massive contract as the number of career starts.
Two quarterbacks who will certainly indirectly benefit from this deal are Kirk Cousins and Aaron Rodgers.
Cousins will likely be a free agent this year after the Washington Redskins traded for Alex Smith.
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Considering that Cousins has a much larger body of work than Garoppolo, it wouldn’t be unreasonable for him to ask for $30 million a year.
Whether a team is willing to take that plunge on Cousins is an entirely different matter.
As far as Rodgers goes, he has just two years left of a relatively team-friendly deal. He has made it known that he’d like a lucrative extension in what could be one of his last contracts.
Based on merit, if Garoppolo is worth $27.5 million, Rodgers is easily worth in excess of $40 million.
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