© Mark J. Rebilas | 2020 Dec 20
If you listened to the rumor mill, and the Vegas sports books, the 49ers were supposed to trade for Matthew Stafford. They didn’t. Instead he went to the division-rival Rams. Now the rumor-mill has the 49ers scraping the bottom of the barrel, with a report on Sunday that Kyle Shanahan is ‘very high’ on Jets QB Sam Darnold, and others believing they will look to trade for Carson Wentz, who recently lost his starting job with the Eagles.
The prospect of either of those happening doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to 49ers’ beat writer Matt Barrows for one simple reason. The whole point of getting a new quarterback is to improve at the position, and neither Darnold nor Wentz are better than Jimmy Garoppolo.
“My general read is that if you’re complaining about Jimmy Garoppolo, bad decisions, bad interceptions, these two guys Wentz and Darnold are much worse,” Barrows told Murph and Mac on Monday morning. “I jotted down some things about Carson Wentz: 57.4 completion percentage in a league where the top guys are around 70 percent these days so anything under 60 is just abysmal. He has terrible pocket presence, we were just talking about the importance of the pocket. Threw 16 touchdowns last season against 15 interceptions and he’s got a long windup. It would take both him and Darnold at least a full season to really master this Kyle Shahanan offense.
“I just don’t see the 49ers doing either of that. Even if they were skittish about Stafford, and got out of that sweepstakes early, I can’t imagine them jumping into either of these two guys.”
There’s a reason why both players are theoretically available. Of the 38 qualifying quarterbacks, Wentz and Darnold graded out 32nd and 35th respectively according to Pro Football Focus in 2020. For context, Nick Mullens was ranked 36th.
Listen to the full interview below.