It wouldn’t be an NFL season if there wasn’t Jimmy Garoppolo injury news.
The former 49ers quarterback signed a three-year, $72.3 million deal with the Las Vegas Raiders this offseason that includes $45 million in guarantees and $33.75 million in fully guaranteed money.
Much like his last offseason, though, he underwent surgery late into the process.
Per The Athletic’s Tashan Reed and Vic Tafur, Garoppolo underwent foot surgery in March, after signing the deal.
The surgery, per the report, dates back to the Lisfranc injury Garoppolo suffered on December 6, when he was given a roughly two-month recovery timeline.
Reed and Tafur reported the following:
Based on that, Garoppolo — who had been pushing for a potential return if the 49ers reached the Super Bowl — should have been fully healthy by the time he agreed to terms with the Raiders on March 13. The first indication something may be amiss came when Garoppolo arrived at team headquarters in Henderson, Nev., to sign his contract on March 16, but left the facility without doing so.
When Garoppolo did sign a day later and had his introductory news conference, he didn’t reveal the reasoning behind the delay or give a clear update on the status of his foot injury. But according to a league source, the Raiders discovered during Garoppolo’s physical that his foot actually did need surgery and the procedure was done after his introduction.
So Garoppolo, once again, is not fully healthy going into the season following a late-season injury that didn’t heal the way it was expected to. The Raiders signed him anyway.
Raiders head coach Josh McDaniels pointed to the amount of time left until the season as cause for calm.
“We don’t play a game for 100 days,” McDaniels said Thursday. “Everything that’s happened since we signed Jimmy, we knew ahead of time… Certainly had an awareness of all of it. Our preference is not to push it and rush anybody back at this point in time.”
Behind Garoppolo in the Raiders pecking order are Brian Hoyer and rookie Aiden O’Connell. It’s a less-than-convincing group, to be sure.
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