After Jimmy Garoppolo suffered a season-ending foot injury on Sunday, reports emerged that San Francisco would sign quarterback Josh Johnson off the Broncos’ practice squad to back up Brock Purdy.
Now that move has become official, with the 49ers announcing they’ve signed Johnson to a one-year deal on Tuesday afternoon.
Johnson was one of the only quarterbacks available who had even a little experience in the 49ers system. He was briefly with the club in 2020.
Head coach Kyle Shanahan was asked about Johnson at his Monday news conference and said that was an obvious factor in bringing Johnson in.
“Just having him here in 2020 for that last month of the year, we got to see a lot of him just as a player, which we like the player, but more importantly, we really like the guy,” Shanahan said. “I think that’s why he has been around for so long and so many places continue to bring him back because he is a natural leader. Guys like playing with him, guys like playing around him, he has a skillset that can go in and give you a chance to win and a person we really believe in and we feel fortunate to get him back here.”
There’s still a chance the 49ers could bring in quarterback Baker Mayfield if he gets to them on the waiver wire. Shanahan was asked about bringing in a quarterback who the team is unfamiliar with and said it would make things harder.
“We would definitely do that if we felt there was a viable guy out there, but that’s really tough in this situation, so you always want to go for the guy who gives you the best chance to win and you take in a lot of factors into the deciding that. But having familiarity with what we do allows the guy to pick up on it pretty fast because it’s not like whoever you bring in you’re going to give a ton of reps to,” Shanahan said. “Trey [Lance] got all of our reps when he was up and then when he went down Jimmy got them all and Brock hasn’t got any first-team reps here. I don’t know if he has this year yet or at least since training camp, so it’ll be the same for Josh when he comes in. He’ll run the scout team and do all that, but he has to sit there and prepare the same way that Brock has been doing it. I know that we got a guy who is familiar with it and capable of doing that.”
Purdy will make his first start on Sunday against Tom Brady and the Buccaneers.
