All 49ers

Should the 49ers Trade the No. 3 Pick and Jimmy Garoppolo for Aaron Rodgers?

The Packers drafted quarterback Jordan Love in Round 1 last year -- they have to move on from Rodgers eventually.
Should the 49ers Trade the No. 3 Pick and Jimmy Garoppolo for Aaron Rodgers?
Should the 49ers Trade the No. 3 Pick and Jimmy Garoppolo for Aaron Rodgers?

The 49ers have a choice.

They can take take the third-best quarterback in the upcoming draft and hope he becomes a franchise guy, or trade for Aaron Rodgers and win a Super Bowl next season.

Hmmm. Tough one.

It seems like the 49ers' top choice earlier this offseason was to trade for Deshaun Watson, because he's elite and young. No brainer. But now his career is in jeopardy and he might not even play next season, so it seems like the 49ers have panicked and pivoted to Plan B -- trade for the No. 3 pick.

And sure, it's possible the 49ers will land a bona-fide franchise quarterback they can build around for the next 15 years at that spot. 

But the odds aren't in their favor. The past 20 years, 59 quarterbacks have been drafted in Round 1, and only 15 truly have lived up to expectations. Which means three out of four first-round quarterbacks do not live up to expectations, i.e. the 49ers have a 75 percent chance to be disappointed by whichever quarterback they draft.

Not ideal.

So instead of gambling the No. 3 pick on a such a longshot, the 49ers should use it to acquire a sure thing. And Rodgers is the ultimate sure thing. He's one of the best quarterbacks alive, and he would have a better chance than anyone else the 49ers can get to lead them to a Super Bowl victory in 2021.

Last year, the Packers drafted quarterback Jordan Love in Round 1 -- they have to move on from Rodgers eventually, just as they moved on from Brett Favre. The 49ers could offer the Packers the No. 3 pick, plus Jimmy Garoppolo and anything else it would take to get the deal done. 

Rodgers should finish his career on the 49ers -- he's from Northern California and he went to Cal. It's only right that he would deliver the Niners their sixth Super Bowl trophy.

He's worth the price.


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.

Share on XFollow grantcohn