What Kyle Shanahan, John Lynch have said about 2017 49ers-Patriots trade talks

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Editor's note: Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch have been forthright in their explanation of how they acquired Jimmy Garoppolo from the Patriots in 2017. In light of a report that surfaced Thursday, here's how things played out in the words of the 49ers' braintrust.

Three years ago, 49ers general manager John Lynch asked New England coach Bill Belichick if he would be willing to trade backup quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo.

Belichick said no.

At that point, in early April of 2017, the 49ers did not have any long-term options at quarterback on their roster. The plan was to wait a year for free agency or try to land a possible franchise quarterback in a trade.

Then, Lynch, perhaps half-jokingly, asked Belichick if he would trade Tom Brady.

“Yeah, we were calling about Jimmy, and we did have that conversation and got quickly rebuffed,” Lynch said on Pardon My Take in August of 2018.

“I figured, ‘You know, what the heck, you’ve got to take your shot, right? You can’t score if you don’t shoot.’ So I had to summon up the courage — and, yeah, Bill laughed at me. He basically hung up on me, but, hey, I took my shot.”

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Lynch went into a little more detail when he appeared on The Rich Eisen Show on Nov. 10, 2017.

"I'm not going to deny [that I asked for Brady]. That did happen," Lynch told Eisen. "He did shoot me down real quick. It was somewhat in jest, but somewhat kind of being a little bit of a smart aleck as well. 'OK, if you're not going to give him up, what about Brady?' And he nearly spit through the phone. It was a pretty visceral reaction from him. But hey, you gotta take the shot, right?"

The 49ers are on record many times about what happened next. On Oct. 30, 2017, the day before the NFL trade deadline, Belichick reached out to 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan and asked for a second-round draft pick in exchange for Garoppolo.

Shanahan recounted at the Super Bowl how the 49ers ended up acquring Garoppolo.

“It was like 5 in the morning,” Shanahan said.” And we had just got killed — I think by Philly – so I thought he was just texting me to try to make me feel better. But he said to give him a call if I had a second.’ And I called him and he ran it (the trade proposal) by me.

“I wasn’t ready for it. So it threw me off a little. But I was definitely excited. So I told him I had just to talk to John (Lynch). Hung up. Called John upstairs. He came right down. We talked for about 10 minutes. And we called back and said, ‘Yes.’”

Shanahan and Lynch have both spoken about the straight-forward nature of the trade talks. Belichick reached out to the 49ers. He made the proposal. Lynch and Shanahan discussed it. And they called back to accept the terms of the trade to acquire Garoppolo.

“It was nice to talk to somebody like Bill. Very football minded. Very efficient,” Shanahan said. “That’s what made it easy for the three of us to get that done, because a lot of times when you deal with people, whatever they ask for, the next time you talk to them, there’s more, there’s a lot of stuff to it. Bill is great to deal with because he’s a very direct guy. I think we are, too. That’s what made it very easy to get done in a short amount of time.”

Shanahan said he was surprised because he thought the trade talks ended in February when Belichick said he was not interested in trading Garoppolo.

[RELATED: 49ers' players never doubted Garoppolo's return]

“It caught me off (guard) because I know that wasn’t a possibility earlier in the year,” Shanahan said. “And then it did happen two days before the trade deadline. Was very surprising because it wasn’t like we were in talks up to that point. We checked on it earlier in the year and it wasn’t an option. Then when it did, he reached out to us to let us know.

“Once I could put it together and figure it out, it took about 10 minutes of John and I talking and we agreed with it, and we were very glad that phone call happened.”

When asked if Belichick told him his reasoning for trading Garoppolo when he did, Shanahan answered, “No, he didn’t. That’s how the dialogue went. You’d have to ask him that. Good luck with that.”

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