The San Francisco 49ers made a huge splash a full day before the trade deadline, as the NFL franchise used a second-round pick to acquire New England Patriots backup quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo. This was, at least reportedly, some time in the making.

Apparently, the 49ers actually tried to trade for Jimmy Garoppolo during the offseason.

“We studied him hard,” general manager John Lynch said. “We studied him hard this offseason. We tried to do a deal this offseason. It didn’t come to fruition. It presented itself now and we felt like it was an opportunity we had to jump at.”

This isn't all that shocking. The 49ers desperately needed a gunslinger heading into this season, and the backup New England signal-caller was a hot commodity.

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As for the flip side of this, the reason it took so long for the Patriots to finally move him, Bill Belichick recently explained.

“We probably had in my mind, in my opinion, the best quarterback situation in the league for the last 2.5 years,” Belichick said. “It is just not sustainable given the way that things are set up. Definitely not something we wanted to walk away from and I felt we rode it out as long as we could. We’ve, over a period of time, explored every option possible to sustain it but, at this point, it felt like we had to make a decision. It’s a very complex situation on multiple levels. This is really the last window that we had and we did what we felt was best for the team.”

Nevertheless, this is a good reminder to fans that, just because you think your front-office isn't trying because they didn't land a player, doesn't inherently mean that is true. Sometimes they do try, but just fail … until they succeed.