Remember those Kirk Cousins-to-49ers rumors?
Trey Lance is coming to town with the San Francisco 49ers this week. The tangled webs we weave, right? I’m old enough to remember when it looked like Kirk Cousins would be the quarterback of the 49ers, not North Dakota State’s favorite high-upside son.
Way back in March 2020, just six days before Cousins signed an extension to remain with the Vikings, ESPN’s Diana Russini strongly suggested that 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan still wanted Cousins despite Jimmy Garoppolo leading his team to a 13-3 season that culminated in a Super Bowl appearance.
"I've never seen somebody want a quarterback as bad as Kyle Shanahan has. It was a deal that almost happened, too,” Russini said on ESPN's Get Up. “Kirk Cousins almost wound up with Kyle in San Francisco. It did not. I think they're waiting for that deal to wrap up."
Up to that point the 49ers had won 21 of 26 starts by Garoppolo in the regular season and he’d registered a 100.3 quarterback rating. Crazy stuff. Why in the world would Shanahan want a similar QB to plug into his system when his QB had been so successful?
But the 49ers’ head coach clearly wasn’t sold on James G because San Francisco used all of the pennies in its piggy bank to move up for Lance in the 2021 NFL Draft. Now Garoppolo sits in limbo while a woman on Twitter draws him every day until he gets traded. She’s on Day 195.
Shanahan told reporters that Garoppolo won’t make the trip to Minnesota for joint practices on Wednesday and Thursday. Imagine the awkwardness of Jimmy throwing warm-up tosses while flanked by the quarterback his head coach used to want and the quarterback that Shanahan gave up all the world’s draft capital to have instead of him.
There’s been a few weird Jimmy G-to-Minnesota rumors too. I suppose if the 49ers ate almost all of Garoppolo’s cap space a la the Mayfield/Panthers trade, Garoppolo could be the NFL’s best clipboard carrier for Cousins. But it seems to defy reason that the Vikings would trade for a QB that many think is better than their starter. At signs of the first September slump the US Bank Stadium crowd would be chanting, “Jimmy, Jimmy.”
It’s not like Garoppolo would be a future option either. Cousins is still under contract through 2023 with a reported no-trade clause of some sort and Garoppolo is set to hit free agency. It would take lots of moving parts and still require a good amount of money to make James Richard Garoppolo the next Vikings quarterback. Oh, and he’s 31 years old and has an injury history.
For two teams whose quarterbacks haven’t had anything to do with each other, there’s been a lot of talk about the Vikings and 49ers QBs playing for the other side.
If the Vikings hadn’t won their 2019 playoff game against the New Orleans Saints and let Cousins’ contract run out after 2020, would he have been a 49er? Would Jamie G have brought his chiseled face to Minnesota? Or would they have been the ones trading up for Lance? Even with Cousins still in the mix, the Vikings made a phone call to the Panthers about trading up for Justin Fields last year so who knows how things would have played out.
Makes ya think, right?
We usually go back to 2018 with the Vikings’ QB situation but forget about the team signing Cousins to an expensive extension to create cap space for — per Rick Spielman — Michael Pierce.
While Cousins played well overall in 2020 and 2021, the team wasn’t in a position to win anything. Attempts to bring in veterans didn’t pan out often enough and developmental players failed to step into the spots left by the Xavier Rhodes’ and Trae Waynes’ of the world. Mike Zimmer’s frustrations grew and the environment became more toxic. He may or may not have blamed Cousins for the roster falling apart, though it was just as much the spending on other veteran stars and the natural progression of rosters constantly being built and rebuilt in the NFL as it was his contract.
The 49ers lived in reality with Jimmy, even if they know he’s good enough to win a lotta games with. They knew when he was going to be at his most expensive and they figured his weaknesses (including persisting injuries) would be more difficult to overcome when he cost them a lot. When he was a kinda-sorta version of 2015 Teddy Bridgewater in 2019, that was fine. When he’s going to cost $27 million in an environment that is demanding more and more athleticism out of the quarterback position, maybe not as much. Garoppolo stunningly got the 49ers to the NFC Championship game in 2021 but they needed a punt block against Green Bay and were let down by his limitations when they couldn’t put the Rams away.
So they’re taking a swing with the absurdly athletic, rocket-armed Lance. There’s no bigger boom-or-bust QB considering how few games he was able to play in college due to COVID. Even with the massive risk involved, there has to be some jealousy in the TCO Performance Center stands — and maybe from those looking out the front office windows in the building too. There’s intrigue and possibility with Lance’s 49ers, especially considering that he takes over a mature team coached by one of the great offensive minds in the game.
Maybe rather than regrets about what could have been, Lance can be longingly looked upon as what’s to come for the Vikings someday soon. A certain reading of Kwesi Adofo-Mensah’s comments this offseason in USA Today could leave you to believe that he will seek out greatness at the position. That could point to the Vikings following a similar path of Cousins, a high-ceiling draft pick next year and then intrigue and potential to follow.
But let’s not forget where we started. Shanahan wanted Cousins. Hm. Does that mean that he believed there was more to be achieved with Cousins than what the Vikings had done in 2018 and 2019? You see where I’m going with this? We don’t know yet if Kevin O’Connell will be an offensive witch doctor like Shanahan but he has the roots with McVay to make that possible.
Maybe this is what the Vikings needed to find out by running it back one more time. Is there a 13-3 Jimmy G 2019 season in there with the right scheming, play calling and support? Even if there isn’t, knowing for sure might be valuable. And waiting until the next quarterback class has a Trey Lance, of course.
