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An Official Moratorium on 49ers "What If" Questions

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Grant Cohn|
An Official Moratorium on 49ers "What If" Questions
An Official Moratorium on 49ers "What If" Questions

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San Francisco 49ers

SANTA CLARA -- What if football fans could slow down and savor the moment?

The 49ers are having one of the most interesting seasons in franchise history, and lots of their fans simply want to speculate about the upcoming offseason. Forget that the 49ers have the best defense in franchise history. Forget that they're playing their rookie third-string quarterback who was the last pick in the draft and currently is undefeated. Forget that in 15 years, 49ers fans still will say, "Remember 2022?"

Let's honor this generational story by not speculating about how it might end and what will happen afterward. All that fruitless speculation only takes away from the drama and passion of this season. 

This is an official moratorium on 49ers-related hypotheticals, particularly "what ifs" such as the following:

1. What if Brock Purdy wins the Super Bowl? Does that mean he automatically wins the starting job over Trey Lance next season?

2. What if Kyle Shanahan wins the Super Bowl with a rookie third-string quarterback? Would that mean Shanahan is better than Bill Walsh?

3. What if Purdy makes it to the NFC Championship game but not the Super Bowl? Would there be a quarterback competition?

4. What if Lance gets upset and demands a trade?

5. What if Jimmy Garoppolo's market dries up yet again and the 49ers sign him to another one-year deal?

6. What if DeMeco Ryans becomes a head coach? Who will replace him?

7. What if Purdy gets injured in the playoffs? Will Garoppolo come back and save the day, or will Josh Johnson play and be better than Purdy?

8. What if Elijah Mitchell is fully healthy next season? Will he split carries with Christian McCaffrey?

9. What if the 49ers can't re-sign Emmanuel Moseley or Jimmie Ward?

10. What if the 49ers sign Tom Brady?

These questions are officially banned until the season ends.

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Grant Cohn
GRANT COHN

Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn's channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers' official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.

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