The one scenario in which a trade for Jimmy Garoppolo makes sense for the Eagles is if it also includes the 49ers’ starting defense. DeMeco Ryans, too. Maybe Deebo Samuel as well.
If you think that sounds absurd, imagine trading a first- or second-round pick for a quarterback who comes with a $27 million cap hit and isn’t appreciably better than the quarterback you already have. Quick thought experiment: Garoppolo and Jalen Hurts do one of those undercover job swap things and spend the 2021 season in the other’s cleats. Which team wins more games: the 49ers with Hurts as their quarterback or the Eagles with Garoppolo? Case closed.
The point here isn’t to legitimize the varied speculation that has emerged over the last week suggesting that the Eagles could be looking to make a big play at quarterback before the draft and that Garoppolo could be a target. Anybody with a nose for offseason stuff should be able to smell what’s likely going on. The 49ers are not committed to second-year quarterback Trey Lance and would love to recoup one of the three first-round picks they traded to select him at No. 3 overall last May. San Francisco does not seem to know whether Lance is any good, but they do know that he isn’t Garoppolo, and that looks like it might be good enough. Whatever both of their futures hold, it’s pretty clear that they can’t involve each other, which leaves the 49ers needing to either cut or trade the latter. Much of what we are hearing is just as likely to be San Francisco attempting to create a sense of demand for Garoppolo as it is to be an accurate reflection of reality. Good ol’ fashioned negotiations in the press.
So there’s plenty of reason to be skeptical about the prospect of the Eagles pursuing Garoppolo. But the idea does help to crystalize what their offseason roster-building strategy should be. Instead of hoping to find a quarterback who can win with this roster, general manager Howie Roseman and coach Nick Sirianni should instead focus on building a roster that a quarterback can win with.
Some definitions are in order here. First, the verb “win.” I do not mean this in the same context that Roseman and Sirianni will use it when referring to the activity in which the Eagles engaged last season. That was not “winning” as much as it was taking advantage of some historically laughable circumstances. Of their nine wins, one came against a team that finished the season with a winning record, and it came in a game in which the opponent started Trevor Siemian. That’s not a knock on Sirianni or Hurts — you can only beat the teams the NFL schedules for you. But those teams were what they were, and there’s no getting around that fact.
Point is, the Eagles need to get their roster to a point where they can win games against any schedule that comes their way. Apart from the offensive line, there isn’t one position on the depth chart that gave them anything better than average production. Forget breaking things down by position. What the Eagles need more than anything are the sorts of playmakers that can single-handedly turn the tide of games. Whether that is Aaron Donald at defensive tackle or Micah Parsons on the edge or Tre’Davious White at cornerback or Cooper Kupp at wide receiver, we saw this season that elite results require elite talent. Thing is, elite talent almost always requires draft picks. Which makes it a good rule of thumb not to trade high draft picks for anything less than elite talent.
That brings us to our second definition: quarterback. Right now, the Eagles have a quarterback. What they really need to find is a Quarterback. The difference between the two is essentially the difference between the dog wagging the tail and vice versa: how much talent does a team need to surround the guy with in order to be a winner. A big-q Quarterback makes the talent around him better. A small-q quarterback is at the mercy of it.
Garoppolo is the epitome of a small-q quarterback. Put the right mix of talent around him, and he can keep you in the thick of things. He’s already been to one Super Bowl, and he came within a couple of plays of going to another, but in both instances it was clear that he was the variable that needed to change in order for the team to go any further. Really, all you need to know is that the team he took to the Super Bowl traded three first-round picks to secure his replacement.
The 49ers decided to do this because they thought they knew they needed a big-q quarterback, and they thought that Lance had a chance to be such a thing. The end result might make them look silly, but their thought process was sound.
Thing is, you can get yourself in an awful lot of trouble trying to see a Quarterback where only a quarterback exists. The desperate search for the big-g Guy is one of the big reasons a third of the NFL has neither a Quarterback nor a quarterback. Heck, the 49ers could easily find themselves in that position by casting their lot with Lance. The Eagles are more fortunate than most to have a small-g guy who gave them the production that Hurts did last season. With a weak draft class and the long odds of acquiring an elite passer via trade, Roseman and Sirianni should stick with the philosophy that they articulated at the end of the season. Focus on all of the other positions where elite playmakers are easier to find. Until they find a quarterback who has that sort of potential, they can do a whole lot worse than giving Hurts the ball.
