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Will the 49ers Trade for Kirk Cousins?

Here we go again.
Grant Cohn|
Will the 49ers Trade for Kirk Cousins?
Will the 49ers Trade for Kirk Cousins?

Here we go again.

It's that time of year when NFL insiders predict that 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan will trade for his former quarterback Kirk Cousins.

This time, it's Peter King. He recently proposed a three-way trade that would send Deshaun Watson to the Vikings, Kirk Cousins to the 49ers and Jimmy Garoppolo to the Texans. The 49ers also would send the Texans their first-round draft pick (No. 12) in the deal.

Which raises the following questions: Should the 49ers trade Garoppolo and the No. 12 pick for Cousins? And is Cousins even worth the 12th pick by itself?

I wouldn't trade the 12th pick for Cousins. Last year, the Colts traded the 13th pick for DeForest Buckner, and Buckner is an All Pro, one of the two best defensive tackles in the NFL. Can't the 49ers get an All Pro with the 12th pick? Someone better than Cousins?

Sure, Cousins would be an upgrade over Garoppolo -- any healthy starting quarterback would be an upgrade. But Cousins isn't a top-five quarterback in the NFL, or even a top-10 quarterback. He's an overpriced good quarterback. On the 49ers, he would be the worst starting quarterback in the NFC West. And the 49ers still would have horrendous pass protection.

Cousins won't fix the 49ers problems, and he won't lead them to a Super Bowl victory. So what's the point of trading for him? The 49ers simply would replace a quarterback who's liked by teammates with a quarterback who's disliked by teammates.

I wish I had more hands, so I could give King's trade proposal four thumbs down.

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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