Good quarterback news all around for 49ers and Raiders

And speaking of two things that have seemingly nothing to do with each other, Eli Manning has been demoted as the starting quarterback for the New York Giants by his soon-to-be-fired head coach, and Jimmy Garoppolo has been promoted to it’s-about-time quarterback by his now-and-future head coach.

Garoppolo was named as the San Francjsco 49ers starter for Sunday’s game in Chicago against the decrepit Bears, and presumably from this point forward, as the experiment to see how much punishment C.J. Beathard could take before the spring in his neck broke and he became irreparable ended with him leaving the Seattle game . . . well, injured.

This is not a surprise, as people have been specuguessing about Garoppolo’s start date since he arrived in San Francisco as the Montana-In-Training. Now the clock really begins on him, Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch.

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Across the bay, though, the Oakland Raiders now have to prepare (if that is the word) for Geno Smith as the Giants’ guide Sunday rather than Manning, who was clumsily replaced by Ben McAdoo in a move that almost surely will lead to his demise and maybe that of general manager Jerry Reese as well. Manning has been the third rail of the Giants train for years now, and he has suffered as the team has been ravaged by injury, a miserable offensive line and general talent drain.

But to imagine a scenario in which Smith wins the Giants and their customers over is simply too sci-fi for words, and that can only help a Raider team that is looking like it will have to win a game without its two best receivers, Michael Crabtree and Amari Cooper. Oakland needs every win it can get, and a dispirited Giants team that has now lurched toward fully chaotic is just the gift that can reassemble what expectations the Oaklands still have for this season.

In other words, there is potentially good news in both Santa Clara and The Town for their largely forlorn football operations . . . if for no other reason than the fact that there are more miserable operations than theirs. Notably, the two operations that serve as their opposition this Sunday.

In other words, it looks like God is playing a Raiders-49ers teaser Sunday.