As of now, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback situation remains a status quo. Kyle Shanahan said he's expecting to start C.J. Beathard in Week 10 against the New York Giants. Shanahan did, however, leave the door open to change his mind following a week of practice.
The odds are slim that Shanahan does make the swap to Jimmy Garoppolo, but it is an indication that San Francisco's new QB is making progress.
"He's a smart guy and works at it, so he's much further ahead now than he was last week," Shanahan said on Wednesday. "I expect that to be week-to-week to continue to get further ahead."
Garoppolo also assessed his progress. The quarterback has been hard at work getting a grasp of Shanahan's playbook and is eager to make his 49ers debut.
"I had a pretty good feel for what I knew and what I didn't. I'm trying to learn the whole thing as fast as possible. The faster we get there, the better."
Shanahan explained that should Beathard have gone down with an injury last week against the Arizona Cardinals, he had a separate call sheet strictly for Garoppolo. The list featured approximately 25 run plays and 20 pass plays, according to Shanahan.
He added that Garoppolo needed to know the verbiage for each one and know how to check out of each play if it wasn't a good look. Garoppolo proved he was capable of the task towards the end of last week which is why the 49ers didn't bring up Nick Mullens from the practice squad.
Even so, there still is no timetable for when Garoppolo might take over the starting job.
"Hopefully it's sooner than later, but again I'm not setting a date on it," Shanahan said. "I think I'm very eager too and excited to see him out there. That doesn't always mean that's the right decision, so that's what I'm trying to balance out. If I just went off impulse and feeling, I would have done that the very first day, the very first second.
"But, I'm trying to do what's right for Jimmy and what's right for our team. A lot more things go into that and it's not something I can set a date on or a plan. It's something that I have to evaluate."
San Francisco's offense as a whole is in need of a shot in the arm. Injuries have decimated the group of late. There's no overstating the impact of losing Joe Staley, Pierre Garçon, George Kittle and Trent Taylor in a two-week span.
The rotation of personnel at crucial positions combined with a rookie quarterback has led opponents to blitz the 49ers relentlessly. That led to Beathard being hit 16 times and sacked on four occasions last week alone. Finding a way to combat pressure will be crucial regardless of who's playing under center.
"We've gotten blitzed probably more, definitely more than I've ever had in my career," Shanahan said. "Most of it is run blitzes to try to stop your run and dare you to do some things. You have to make people pay and that's the only way to scare people out of stuff and I think we've struggled to make people pay. The whole way I look at offense is what are you doing to us. I'm going to try to find a way to scare you out of that and until you do, people are going to continue to do that.
"I think that's where we haven't been able to dictate what the defense is doing and that's the goal. I don't want to just bang my head against a wall and do stuff over and over. I want to find the weakness of the defense and attack that and make them change to open up other stuff. We haven't done that consistently enough."
It is likely to be Beathard who is doing the attacking on Sunday, but it sounds like Garoppolo's time is coming.
