Kyle Shanahan has 'moved on' from Kirk Cousins dream
The dream is dead? It's been dead for six years?
Turns out, if 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan is telling the truth, that he hasn't thought about teaming up with Kirk Cousins since 2017 when Jimmy Garoppolo impressed in six starts after being traded from New England to San Francisco. So much for all those Kirk-49ers trade rumors the past five years...
Asked Thursday if he allows himself to think about what it would've been like coaching Cousins in a 49ers uniform, Shanahan said "not really" and intimated that he moved on from those thoughts long ago.
"Not really. You think that all the way up to the moment, but when we got the opportunity that we traded for Jimmy," Shanahan disclosed, "but after those six games that he played we moved on. And we've moved on since then and you never really look back."
In August, news broke that claimed Shanahan called Washington in 2017 and offered the 49ers' No. 2 overall pick for Cousins, but his call wasn't returned. Cousins played the 2017 season under the franchise tag in Washington and then he signed with Minnesota as a free agent before the 2018 season.
Shanahan recalled what he thinks is a "good story" about the 2012 draft when he was the offensive coordinator under his father, Mike Shanahan, in Washington.
"He just came in in such a weird situation," Shanahan said of Cousins, noting that he was a fourth-round pick the same year Washington traded up to take quarterback Robert Griffin III with the No. 2 pick.
"It was a good story. I remember that we had the sixth pick and I knew if we were going at six my dad wanted to take [Ryan Tannehill]. I was hoping to get Kirk in the second round and go a different direction. Then we traded up to two and went with Robert," Shanahan said.
"My dad really liked Russell Wilson and he said we were going to take Russell Wilson in the fourth and get two quarterbacks there that year. And then we got to the fourth and Russell was gone. I remember him coming to my room and he's like, 'Hey do you still want your guy, Kirk?' I was like, 'I don't know about that, dad, we've gone another direction.' He's like, 'No the plan was we were going to take two, we're still taking two.' Then we ended up taking Kirk, which I was pumped about because that's who I wanted originally."
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Washington cleaned house in 2013 and the Shanahans were fired and they never had much of an opportunity to work with Cousins in game situations.
"It was a weird situation for Kirk, to go into a place where you know you're not going to have that opportunity. But he just kind of sat there and soaked everything in and learned a lot. It was a fun two years working with him every day," Shanahan explained.
"Didn't get to coach him much in games. I think we had three games with him, but he was awesome in the office."
