Nevius: Not the way 49ers’ Jimmy Garoppolo saga was supposed to go

And you thought it was a shocker when Buster Posey announced his retirement.

Jimmy Garoppolo has signed a $6 million contract to stay with the 49ers as a backup quarterback ... and people are losing it.

Go ahead and give into the astonishment. This is a stunner. We’ve been hearing for months that Jimmy G was outta here. It was just a matter of when and which team would pick him up. It was a done deal.

Now there are a long list of people shaking their heads and saying, “Wait. What?”

But save a thought for Rita Oak. She’s the Portuguese artist who started a Twitter feed: “Drawing Jimmy G every day until he gets traded.”

Monday was her 208th consecutive drawing. Now it looks like she’s signed up for another six months.

You have to love the pundits who are in full backpedal, now saying they had an idea this was going to happen. Or that, now that they give it some thought, it makes perfect sense.

And it would.

If this had been the plan all along.

Instead we had a world where the 49ers’ brain trust of Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch gave up on Garoppolo, despite his well-documented winning record — 33-14 with the 49ers, two NFC championship games and one trip to the Super Bowl in five seasons with the team.

Where Shana-Lynch mortgaged the farm, trading three (!) first-round draft choices and a third-rounder to select Trey Lance and announce that he was going to be the new QB1. Then they talked openly of trying to trade their former starter.

Or the preseason, where Garoppolo was the exile on the practice field, throwing passes to a ball boy before regular practice.

Offered the chance to attend quarterback meetings, Garoppolo declined. What was the point? He’d be out of there in nothing flat.

It seemed logical. We had former NFL general managers telling us he was headed for Cleveland. Or Miami.

Seattle, we heard, was a lock. The 49ers would have to cut him before the season began and the Seahawks would swoop in and grab him.

Nope. And nope.

And, to be fair, there is a weird logic to it. By doing this, the team has the most experienced, most skilled (and good-looking) backup in organized football.

But let’s not pretend some eggs weren’t broken to whip up this omelet.

For starters, here’s a question to Lance: Now do you believe the NFL is a business?

Spin it as you will, if the team was supremely confident in Lance, this wouldn’t have happened. Rookie Brock Purdy looks like a promising young fellow who could be the backup and the team could save a lot of money.

Instead, Lance will have the pressure of being a first-year starter on a team that thinks it can make the Super Bowl. AND he’ll have Garoppolo on the sideline looking over his shoulder.

The fan base has already begun to freak out.

The Jimmy haters can’t understand why he’s back on the roster. Those who have already installed Lance as this year’s MVP are doubling down. And those who have had their doubts about an inexperienced quarterback are cranking up their I-told-you-so’s.

So everything is going according to plan, right?

To be fair, there have been a couple of hints about this. There was Shanahan, talking about Purdy’s poise and effectiveness in preseason.

“Brock was a four-year starter in the Big 12 and I think that doesn’t get talked about enough,” Shanahan said. “How much experience that is for someone. For him to have that many games under his belt, that’s a lot of football ... a lot of pressure from a freshman all the way to his senior year.”

You mean as opposed to someone like Lance, who played just 19 games at North Dakota State?

Also, the “Thursday Night Football” crew spent lots of time on the Garoppolo situation in the final preseason game. Analyst Kirk Herbstreit wanted to know why the 49ers were trying to get rid of Jimmy, given his winning record.

Now, it might be that Herbstreit was just musing. But it is a fact of life that announcers often get a few off-the-record talking points from the front office. Was he telegraphing the move?

(Herbstreit, by the way, tweeted: “Smart. Insurance policy” after the deal to make Garoppolo a backup was announced.)

But there’s no mistaking the roller coaster ride the Jimmy G train has traveled. He’s been the Savior of the Bay. He’s been chronically injured. He’s won big games with last-second drives. And lost them with ill-advised throws.

He’s been the Bay Area’s lightning rod. Everybody had an opinion.

We learned that he was best in quick throws over the middle. And that once he was out of the pocket and improvising on the run, bad things tended to happen.

We saw him stand in there, take the shots and make the throw. But sometimes we wished he’d just held onto the ball.

He got hurt, and more than once. But he also played, and played well, with a torn ligament in his thumb and a shoulder that needed surgery.

He’s been called a turnover machine. But last regular season, he threw 12 picks in 15 games. Super Bowl winner Matt Stafford threw 17 in 17 games.

He’s reportedly beloved by teammates but he infuriates some fans. He’s been a hero, a zero and injury-prone. He’s both polarizing and inspiring.

And now we get to do the whole thing again.

Because Jimmy’s back, baby.

Contact C.W. Nevius at cw.nevius@pressdemocrat.com. Twitter: @cwnevius