Folks, it’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for: pre-training camp football.
At long last, starting on Tuesday through Thursday, 49ers players will get together in the first mandatory portion of offseason activities for team-building, kumbayas and just a little bit of football practice, too.
Someone who has been excused from the sporting event of the summer? Jimmy Garoppolo.
As expected, the 49ers will not force Garoppolo, who is still rehabbing after ill-timed shoulder surgery — which Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch blamed for crushing all trade talks, at least temporarily — to come to mandatory minicamp.
That’s no surprise given that Garoppolo discernibly cannot throw a football and forcing him to come to minicamp as an uncomfortable spectator to the Trey Lance show seems in no one’s best interest.
There are still questions about Deebo Samuel’s status, though. Samuel was in attendance at Game 2 of the NBA Finals, as were Kyle Shanahan and Trent Williams — who was not at OTAs, but Matt Barrows reports will be at mandatory minicamp.
Should Samuel, or anyone else, fail to report, he will be subject to a $93,085 fine should he miss all three days. That’s almost enough to rent a terrible single apartment in San Francisco.
We’ll see if Samuel is willing to eat that cost. If so, it would register as an attempt to put pressure on a 49ers front office, one that generally seems unfazed by uncomfortable situation, let alone with a player who has little leverage.