After then-49ers quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo suffered a foot injury in December 2022, ESPN.com’s Adam Schefter reported that Garoppolo did not need foot surgery and that he could resume action in seven or eight weeks.
He was therefore not operated on. And he was supposedly on track to return, to the point that some wondered if he could have prepared for the fateful NFC Championship game, which saw the 49ers ultimately have no healthy quarterbacks. .
It is now clear that Garoppolo was not faking it. It is also now clear that he should have had the operation in December.
By the time Garoppolo became a free agent, the foot had not healed. He hadn’t healed to the point where the Raiders refused to pay him an $11.25 million signing bonus, instead moving the money to the 2023 base salary – money he will never earn if the operation did not repair the foot.
Even if the surgery works, there’s a lingering question currently ricocheting around the NFL grapevine. Why was he not operated on in December?
The most obvious explanation from the team’s perspective is that the 49ers thought he might come back for the Super Bowl, if the 49ers had gotten this far. It is not clear if this would have been the case.
A month later, the Raiders weren’t comfortable clearing it without surgery. Sometimes different doctors from different teams will have different opinions on the same injury. But it would have been odd for the 49ers to welcome him back just weeks before the Raiders weren’t comfortable welcoming him.
The 49ers also might not have been inclined to push for surgery because, anyway, he wouldn’t have been ready to play in the playoffs at any point.
Then there’s the reality that, as a league source shrewdly pointed out, Garoppolo must have wanted to go under the knife. Chances are he doesn’t want to have surgery.
For Lisfranc lesions, the issue becomes the spacing of the bones. At a certain spacing, the foot becomes unstable. Within a certain range, the injury can be repaired with rehab. Garoppolo might have decided to go for a conservative approach (remember, he delayed shoulder surgery in 2022), hoping rehabilitation would work.
Ultimately, that was not the case. Ultimately, he needed surgery. Even then, the question becomes whether the surgery will work.
The Raiders and Garoppolo assume that will be the case. The revised contract, including the removed signing bonus and waiver that potentially bars Garoppolo from receiving a penny from the Raiders, sets a different vibe.
Time will tell if it works. If not, the Raiders will have a problem at the most important position on the field. And Garoppolo will be a man without a country — and without compensation.
Why didn’t Jimmy Garoppolo have foot surgery during the 2022 season? originally appeared on Pro Football Talk