Jed York says he’d be fine with keeping Jimmy…

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The 49ers have made it clear that they would like to trade Jimmy Garoppolo. But at this point, the quarterback’s shoulder surgery appears to have put that on hold.

So now San Francisco is carrying Garoppolo on its roster, despite the fact that trading him or cutting him would clear $25.5 million off the team’s salary cap. As head coach Kyle Shanahan said on Tuesday, the 49ers aren’t going to get rid of Garoppolo just to get him off the books.

So while the club is clearly preparing to move on to Trey Lance as its starter in 2022, there’s still a possibility Garoppolo could remain on the roster. At the annual league meeting on Tuesday, 49ers CEO Jed York said he’d be fine with keeping Garoppolo around as a backup — even at the quarterback’s current salary.

“I’m not the coach. I’m not the General Manager,” York said, via Nick Wagoner of ESPN. “They have my authority to put the roster together as they see fit. If that’s what it is, then as long as we’re competing and we’re winning football games, they have the ability to do what they think is best to help us win. We’ve made trades and we’ve had guys that are making a lot of money who haven’t been on the field. It’s easy to say your hypothetical question, like it’s easy to go to that one but it’s not about what is one individual piece. It’s, what’s the collective?

“If we think it’s the best decision to have two guys that we think are very, very capable of winning football games and giving us a chance to win the Super Bowl, there’s no position [that’s] more important than that in all of sports. So, if we’re going to over-invest in something, I’d rather over-invest in the quarterback position than anything else.”

Keeping Garoppolo around as a backup could create an awkward situation for the 49ers, as the quarterback has taken the team to the NFC Championship Game in two of the last three seasons. But the team traded up to get Lance for a reason. And at this point, it doesn’t appear San Francisco would like to hinder Lance’s development by making him play second fiddle to Garoppolo for another year.