Sparked apparently by Deion Sanders and fueled by reports from those who believe there’s something to it, the possibility of Tom Brady joining the 49ers has caught fire this week. 49ers tight end George Kittle seems to be turning a hose on it.
“Let’s run it back 10,” Kittle tweeted on Wednesday afternoon, with a link to an Instagram photo of Kittle and current 49ers quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo.
As previously noted, 49ers running back Jeff Wilson has been more pointed, saying that the talk of Brady supplanting Garoppolo is “ludicrous.”
While both players, along with the rest of the team, have the right to say whatever they want, the team ultimately will do what it thinks is in the best interests of the franchise. If (and that could be a big if) coach Kyle Shanahan decides that Brady is the right guy for the job, Shanahan will explain it to the players, and they’ll either get behind it or they won’t.
Kittle, whose love of football is as obvious as it is infectious, surely would get behind it. He may not like it, but he’d get behind it.
Still, it will be a delicate situation. Far more delicate than it was for the Vikings in 2009, when Brett Favre supplanted Tarvaris Jackson. That move supposedly sparked a “schism” in the locker room, and then the Vikings went to the NFC Championship thanks to Favre, where they narrowly missed making it to the Super Bowl (also thanks to Favre).
The challenge for the 49ers will be explaining to the players that a guy who took them to the Super Bowl needs to go. That doesn’t happen very often. But a guy with six rings being available never happens, and the application of truth serum surely would result in some of them admitting that, if Brady not Garoppolo had been the quarterback in Super Bowl LIV, the parade that happened in Kansas City would have happened in another town with two words in its name.
