During the San Francisco 49ers’ Sunday game against the Miami Dolphins, Niners quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo suffered a severe foot injury and will be required to undergo surgery. It is the third time since 2018 that Garoppolo will finish a season on injured reserve.
Coach Kyle Shanahan said Garoppolo will miss the rest of the season and undergo surgery on his left foot after “he broke a few things”, adding that the 49ers would need to add another quarterback with Garoppolo out: “We know we gotta bring in someone else in at least.”
Shanahan continued: “We’ll see going forward, but we got a resilient group. We got a strong team. Guys who love football. Gotta make sure we really ride that high the rest of the year and hope that makes us better.”
The injury happened just eight plays into the Niners’ opening drive of a 33-17 win. Dolphins linebacker Jerome Baker and end Jalean Philips converged on Garoppolo for a sack; the Niners quarterback attempted to keep going but caught his left foot under Philips as he was thrown to the ground. Garoppolo was afterward seen being carted to a locker room for further evaluation.
The Niners’ Brock Purdy, the team’s 2022 seventh-round draft pick out of Iowa State, had to fill in for Garoppolo after the fact. He finished the game with 210 yards on 25 of 37, with two touchdown passes and one interception thrown. Purdy is expected to stay with the Niners as they continue down a now-uncertain path toward the Super Bowl.
The news comes at a particularly bad time for Niners fans, who saw Garoppolo’s as one of the team’s tickets to the Super Bowl. It also spells a streak of misfortune for the team’s quarterbacks; as their previous starting QB, Lance Franklin, landed on injured reserve after suffering a right fibula fracture in September’s game against the Seattle Seahawks. Garoppolo started every game since Lance’s injury until his own. It’s the latest in a long list of injuries Garoppolo has dealt with since his arrival in San Francisco in 2017. He tore his left ACL in 2018, had a pair of high right ankle sprains in 2020, and dealt with a fractured right thumb and sprained right shoulder the following year in 2021.
“That was brutal,” said Niners running back Christian McCaffrey. “I haven’t been around a long time here, but I can’t say enough good things about him. … When you see a guy like Brock come in and do well like that, it’s because of Jimmy. It’s because of learning from a guy like Jimmy. … Heartbreaking.”
