It’s another NFL offseason where the 49ers have some uncertainty under center, which means another offseason of thrusting San Francisco into various trade rumors revolving around players at the position.
This year the two names lumped in with the 49ers are Aaron Rodgers and Kirk Cousins. Because of course they are. Rodgers was connected heavily to San Francisco in 2021 before they drafted Trey Lance. Cousins has been linked to the 49ers and head coach Kyle Shanahan since 2017.
The 49ers don’t have a surefire franchise quarterback going into this season, and injuries have left Sam Darnold as the only healthy QB on the roster going into April. Trying to push a veteran signal caller to San Francisco makes sense, especially with a roster like theirs that is ready to contend for a Super Bowl.
It’s worth noting that the rumors and speculation are just that. There’s been no hard reporting about the 49ers exploring any deals. Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk said on his podcast that there was “some chatter” and “some noise” among people in the league at NFL owners meetings “about Cousins being traded to the 49ers.”
This tracks from a 30,000-foot view, but there are reasons it doesn’t make sense for the 49ers to even explore such a move that we’ll get to later.
The Rodgers angle comes from Fox Sports 1 and WFAN host Craig Carton, who on his TV show Tuesday said the 49ers are ready to get involved with all of their third-round picks this year and a first-round pick next year if the Packers don’t work out a deal that sends Rodgers to the Jets.
This, again, makes sense on the surface, but even a small amount of digging shows just how far off the 49ers are from making a monster move like this.
Let’s dive into some of the issues with these moves from San Francisco’s perspective:
Financials
This is perhaps the biggest thing that isn’t touched on with any of these trade rumors. While the cap is malleable, San Francisco is sitting with just $2,045,314 in available space. They certainly can create more, but they’ve built a cheap QB room on purpose. Their three QBs are going to cost less than $15 million against the salary cap this year. That’s allowed them to roster the bevy of high-priced talent that makes them a Super Bowl contender. Not to mention defensive end Nick Bosa will likely receive an extension this offseason that makes him the highest-paid defensive player in the league.
Cousins on a post-June 1 trade would cost the 49ers about $10 million in 2023.
Rodgers meanwhile has a $58 million roster bonus due this year, which any team trading for Rodgers would need to work out with the Packers before making any deal for the QB.
Getting more expensive at the position doesn’t make sense given how the 49ers’ roster is put together.
49ers QB room
The 49ers have built a cheap QB room on purpose. Even if Brock Purdy is going to miss a few regular season games while recovering from offseason elbow surgery, they have Trey Lance and Sam Darnold on the depth chart. While neither of those QBs are as accomplished as Rodgers or Cousins, San Francisco has constructed a team that doesn’t need elite QB play. They’ve given no sign of being so concerned with their quarterbacks that they need to give up draft capital (which they’ll need to acquire some cheap talent, FYI) to acquire another one. When Purdy is ready to play, all indications are the 49ers will be thrilled to put him back in the lineup on a club he guided to the NFC championship game last year.
An NFL analyst may believe the 49ers need a better QB to be a Super Bowl contender, but it’s exceedingly clear heading into the draft that the decision-makers in Santa Clara don’t believe that.
Kirk Cousins as Kyle Shanahan's "guy"
We need to stop with the notion that Cousins is some sort of quarterbacking unicorn in Shanahan’s mind. Cousins was going to be available in the 2018 offseason, and Shanahan believed the 49ers could contend quicker by adding him than by drafting a QB and putting him on a still-building roster. Instead Jimmy Garoppolo became available for a second-round pick during the 2017 season, and the 49ers decided to pay him the following offseason instead of Cousins. If Shanahan was so dedicated to acquiring Cousins, he would’ve just punted on Garoppolo and signed Cousins.
It’s also worth noting that Shanahan was in Washington with Cousins for two seasons. Cousins in those two years started four games, went 1-3, threw for eight touchdowns and 10 interceptions and completed 56.2 percent of his passes.
Additionally, Shanahan addressed the Cousins stuff directly ahead of the 2021 draft, when speculation raged that the 49ers were picking Mac Jones because he was the most Cousins-like quarterback.
“To say that my prototypical guy is someone like Kirk Cousins, I mean, that’s just, everyone knows my history with Kirk,” Shanahan said in a press conference in late March of 2021. “We drafted him in the fourth round at Washington. I got to coach him for three games. We were fired. I left. Thought we’d have a chance to get him here in free agency and I would have loved to have him in free agency until Jimmy came along the year before, because I thought we could have won with him, just like Minnesota has. I think Kirk does a good job for whatever team he plays for every year. There’s a number of quarterbacks like that, but that’s the only one I’ve been associated with because people thought I was trying to bring him here, which I was at the time. It’s not because that’s how you draw it up. If you’re going to draw it up, you’re going to draw the biggest, fastest, strongest and best quarterback in the pocket. So, I think that’s pretty ridiculous to say that, but I also tell you, I love Kirk. I know I’m not allowed to talk about other players, but Kirk’s a hell of a player and a lot of people would be lucky to have a quarterback like that.”
Shanahan clearly likes Cousins, but he doesn’t think he’s particularly unique, and he does not like him so much that he’d obliterate the Super Bowl-caliber roster the 49ers have built so they can insert Cousins under center.
Aaron Rodgers' various issues
There are a handful of things here beyond the exorbitant cost of his contract. The biggest is that ESPN’s Adam Schefter has reported the Packers don’t want to send Rodgers to the NFC. He said on SportsCenter in January “I don’t think that there’s anyway the Packers would trade him in the NFC. And if they do go ahead and trade him, it would be to the AFC.”
Green Bay moving Rodgers to the 49ers, the team that ended their playoff runs twice in the last three years, is hard to fathom.
The 49ers sending that much draft capital (three thirds and a future first) for an expensive, 40-year-old QB who may or may not want to play football anymore, is also hard to fathom.
In a fantasy world where nothing outside of what’s happening on paper matters, sure, put Rodgers on a loaded 49ers roster and see what happens. But Smokey, this is not fantasy world, this is the NFL. There are rules.
It would be a nightmare for San Francisco to jump through the hoops required to even hash out a deal for Rodgers even IF the Packers would trade him within the NFC, and they’d be doing it all despite being satisfied with the QB room they’ve built.
Which leads us to the final point…
The 49ers really like Brock Purdy
