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Joe Montana on who 49ers’ QB should be next season: ‘I start Jimmy’

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© Kirby Lee | 2022 Nov 21

Joe Montana knows what he likes, and what he likes is Jimmy Garoppolo.

The Hall of Fame quarterback has gone on the record multiple times saying that he believes Garoppolo should be the 49ers’ quarterback of the future over Trey Lance.He hasn’t changed his tune now that Brock Purdy is in the fold.

When asked by Mike Silver who the 49ers should start next season — Purdy or Lance — Montana said it should still be Jimmy’s job, even after Kyle Shanahan said he didn’t see “any scenario” where Garoppolo could return.

“I start Jimmy,” Montana told Silver. “How many games has Jimmy won? For the longest time, questions were out with Jimmy for a while. But the one thing he has been able to do is win games for those guys. He’ll make a mistake here and there but some of those things I don’t just put on Jimmy.”

“Yeah, he made a crazy throw and mistake in the playoff game a couple of years ago,” Montana continued. “But he has won a lot of games. I can’t say the same from Trey. You don’t know that from him…So, I think you start the guy who has won all the games for you. You’ve got to figure out the backup situation with Trey. Does Trey know the offense well enough? Is he meant for that offense?”

Even if the 49ers thought Garoppolo was the best of the three, Garoppolo is out of contract, and San Francisco would have to come to an agreement that would be far more lucrative than either Lance or Purdy’s contracts. What’s more, the 49ers scored over 30 points a game with Purdy behind center, so it’s hard to imagine they’d have any interest in going back to Jimmy.

Still, Montana is not convinced, and it might have something to do with him losing his job to Steve Young all those years ago.

“He still won a lot of games before he got hurt,” Montana said. “He put them in that position to go on that run to begin with. So you handed a guy a team, sort of like somebody else I know got handed a team, so you gotta go with the guy that’s been winning games and gets the offense and go from there.”

Sounds like Joe still hasn’t let that one go.