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Kirk Cousins is one quarterback who will always be linked to Kyle Shanahan. Shanahan’s infatuation with Cousins is a matter of public record, and it’s part of the reason the 49ers don’t have Deshaun Watson or Patrick Mahomes right now.
Let’s rephrase that: Cousins, and how Shanahan views quarterbacks, is the reason the 49ers don’t have Watson or Mahomes.
In that inaugural year of the Shanahan-Lynch era, the brain trust took Solomon Thomas and bet their future almost solely on the speculation that they’d acquire Kirk Cousins in 2017 or 2018.
Makes sense. Why would you look to draft a generational quarterback (or two) when you could have a guy like … Kirk Cousins.
Shanahan admitted as much at the Super Bowl, saying the 49ers probably didn’t scout Mahomes enough.
“I didn’t look into him obviously as much as I should have,” Shanahan said. “We definitely looked into him, studied all of his tape. Was just a freak, could make any throw, had the ability to anything. That was a little bit different situation for us. We had the second pick in the draft, did not feel like from all the intel that you get and stuff that he was gonna go that high.”
“It was a little different situation for us just ’cause I think it’s pretty well documented of just the relationship I had with Kirk being in Washington and I felt very confident that he wasn’t gonna stay there. So anytime you go into a season knowing that a franchise quarterback was going to be available the next year, it made me a lot more picky with what we were looking at.”
But the 49ers didn’t wait around for Cousins, trading for Garoppolo in the middle of the 2017 season. In 2018, Cousins signed a three-year, fully guaranteed, $84 million deal with the Vikings in free agency.
There will always be rumors of the 49ers trading for Cousins, but according to ESPN’s Adam Schefter, who joined The Haberman and Middlekauff Podcast, they’re not based in reality.
“I guess something could happen, but I haven’t heard that that’s the case, so I don’t know where that’s coming from,” Schefter said. “Anything’s always possible, but Kirk Cousins re-did his deal this summer. … I have not heard anything about Kirk Cousins being available.”