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Are the 49ers in the market for a quarterback?

Here's why the 49ers met with North Texas quarterback Mason Fine
Grant Cohn|
Are the 49ers in the market for a quarterback?
Are the 49ers in the market for a quarterback?

Believe it or not, the 49ers want a quarterback.

They’ve met with North Texas quarterback Mason Fine, according to Tom Pelissero of NFL Network. Fine most likely will be an undrafted free agent. This news comes two weeks after the 49ers turned down multiple trade offers for former undrafted free agent quarterback Nick Mullens, according to The Athletic's Michael Lombardi.

Could these two reports be related?

Yes, they could.

Mullens most likely is a future starting quarterback in the NFL. In 2018, his rookie season, he started eight games and posted a quarterback rating of 90.8. He outperformed Teddy Bridgewater, who posted a 70.6 rating in one start with the Saints in 2018.

But in 2019, Bridgewater started five games for the Saints, and his quarterback rating was 99.8. Meanwhile, Mullens didn’t start any games, because Jimmy Garoppolo stayed healthy.

Now, Bridgewater is the starting quarterback for the Panthers -- they gave him a three-year, $63-million contract this offseason. And Mullens remains a backup.

Mullens will be a restricted free agent in 2021, and an unrestricted free agent in 2022. The 49ers surely don’t want to let him leave and receive nothing in return. Trading him makes sense, because he is a valuable commodity.

Maybe the 49ers didn’t like the trade offers they received for Mullens this offseason. Maybe the 49ers will try to trade Mullens during the preseason or the regular season if some other team’s quarterback gets injured. Or maybe the 49ers will try to trade Mullens next offseason.

If the plan indeed is to trade Mullens, the 49ers will need a quarterback to replace him as the backup. Perhaps another undrafted free agent who could develop on the practice squad.

Fine fits the bill. He and Mullens are similar. Both are small quarterbacks (Mullens is 6’1”, Fine is 5’11”), and neither has a big, strong arm. But both started four years in Conference USA, and both were prolific passers. Mullens threw 1,546 passes and 87 touchdowns in college, while Fine threw 1,655 passes and 93 touchdowns.

Fine could be the next Mullens. If that’s the case, the 49ers would be the perfect team to take him.

Published
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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