Thirty-one summers ago, Phil Simms found himself in the center of a big-time quarterback controversy. In 2022, there’s not quite a controversy brewing between Trey Lance and Jimmy Garoppolo, but Simms thinks there’s some potential for locker room division with the 49ers.
Simms, now an NFL analyst for CBS, joined 95.7 The Game’s “The Morning Roast” Wednesday to give his thoughts on the situation developing in Santa Clara, now that Garoppolo has returned on a restructured one-year deal to back up Lance.
Host Steven Langford (filling in for Joe Shasky) asked Simms if any potential tension between Lance and Garoppolo was something to worry about.
“Is there any truth to that?” Langford asked. “Or is that something that the media and maybe certain segments of the fan base, something they try to create that maybe isn’t reality?”
“That narrative is real. I lived it. It is,” Simms said. “Anytime there’s any question about your quarterback, players are gonna talk about it and they’re gonna have opinions. They’re gonna have, ‘He’s my favorite, I want this one,’ things like that. For Trey Lance, it’s not the great scenario going into this season for him. Of course it’s not. But if he’s tough, which he is, He’s gotta be mentally really tough and just go.”
Looking at the current situation with the 49ers, Simms thinks they could have handled it better.
“We’re all geniuses after the fact, of course, but they didn’t handle it well,” Simms said. “I can’t imagine if I was a young starting quarterback and the job is yours and all this over stuff – but we got this guy over here throwing that’s done all this good stuff in NFL and won a lot of games for us. He’s just gonna work out. It’s just strange. It had to have been uncomfortable at times.”
During the 1990 season, Simms was injured and Jeff Hostetler took over, leading the New York Giants to their second Super Bowl victory in five seasons. That summer, new head coach Ray Handley decided to hold an open competition between Simms and Hostetler for the starting gig.
“That offseason, all during training camp, that’s all that was talked about,” Simms said. “I heard players, teammates talking about it in the locker room. It just wasn’t a great situation. Look, I’ll be honest. I didn’t make it a great situation sometimes either. Because you’re combative, you want the job, all these other things. Can’t read the paper. And of course at training camp you gotta listen to the fans and how they react to you, and you can’t let that bother you.
“Overall, the opinion was everybody wanted Jeff Hostetler because we just won the Super Bowl. But that situation, I knew the players were talking about it, I heard coaches talking about it. Guys would say things to me and I’d say, ‘Wow you guys are talking about this at night?’ That’s when you know it’s gonna affect the football team, it’s gonna be talked about. There’s nothing you can do about that.”
Hostetler would win the starting job out of camp but eventually got injured in 1991, as Simms took over Giants missed the playoffs in 1991.
This is a completely different situation in a different generation, so we’re not comparing apples to apples here. Lance is saying all the right things and Garoppolo is regarded as a true pro. But it’s interesting to think what type of locker room conversations players are having regarding the Lance-Garoppolo dynamic.
Coach Kyle Shanahan sounds confident the 49ers will be able to stay insular, block the outside noise, saying the team did a good job of it last year. Simms said Garoppolo’s presence should be a non-issue for Lance, if he’s the right guy for the job.
“That talk is gonna be there,” Simms said. ‘There’s nothing you can do about it. If this shatters his confidence, then he’s not the man. Almost every quarterback is gonna go through some unbelievably tough times. Everybody’s not gonna live the charmed life of Patrick Mahomes, with great talent, great coaching, great players around him and all that. There’s always gonna be tension, conflict, whatever and you gotta handle that. Is it easy? No. But you gotta handle that.”
As for Garoppolo, Simms thinks the veteran isn’t under much pressure.
“I think he knows the situation, I think he’ll be extremely relaxed,” Simms said. “Because he knows, most likely, the only thing he can be is the star that comes in and rescues the team.”
Despite the immense expectations for Lance and a franchise that’s in win-now mode, Simms thinks the 22-year-old will be up to the challenge.
“It will be interesting to see how he handles this whole situation,” Simms said. “I believe he’ll get off to a really good start and quiet everybody down.”
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