49ers GM John Lynch Explains Team Did Have Internal Discussions About Signing Tom Brady ‘For A Day Or Two’

49ers thought about signing tom brady

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There were a countless number of rumors involving Tom Brady after he became a free agent. While Tampa Bay ultimately won the Brady sweepstakes, some people were convinced early on that he would end up on the West Coast with either the Raiders, Chargers or 49ers.

After all, Brady is from California, and playing his last couple of seasons out West would have made a lot of sense and it turns out the 49ers shared those same thoughts, but only for a brief moment.

San Francisco general manager John Lynch joined ‘The Rich Eisen Show’ on Tuesday and the two got to talking about Brady. Lynch was upfront and honest about the swirling rumors and admitted that the team did have discussions about going after the greatest of all time during free agency.

“When you’re talking about one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time with Tom Brady, of course you’re going to have some internal discussion,” Lynch told Eisen on Tuesday. “And then you hear rumors that hey, he’d like to come home, that kind of thing.”

It was certainly a unique hypothetical imagining the 49ers, fresh off of a Super Bowl appearance, trading 28-year-old Jimmy Garoppolo and electing to sign a soon to be 43-year-old Brady. Ultimately those internal discussions only lasted ‘a day or two,’ but hey, they did happen.

“Of course Kyle [Shanahan] and I had discussions. We’re always into getting better, so you always look at everything, especially a situation like that,” Lynch said. “But within a day or two, Kyle and I looked at each other and said, ‘You know what, we really like what we have in Jimmy.’”

One would imagine that those rumors and now these statements from Lynch wouldn’t necessarily help the confidence of Garoppolo, who still has three years left on his current contract, but only time will tell.