Analyzing a Potential 49ers Trade for Matt Ryan

Yesterday, I broke down a potential 49ers trade for Aaron Rodgers. Now let's do Matt Ryan.

Grant Cohn | Jan 23, 2021

Yesterday, I broke down a potential 49ers trade for Aaron Rodgers.

Now let's do Matt Ryan.

Both Ryan and Rodgers fall into a class of veteran quarterbacks who could be too expensive for their current teams next season, because the salary cap will go down. Rodgers will take up roughly 20 percent of the Packers cap space in 2021, while Ryan will take up roughly 23 percent of the Falcons cap space. Yikes.

Ryan will be 36 next season, and the Falcons have the fourth pick in the upcoming draft. Plus they have a new head coach -- Arthur Smith. So it's possible the Falcons would like to draft a quarterback, unload Ryan's contract and rebuild.

But the Falcons can't trade Ryan until the summer. Because if they trade him before June 1, they'd take on more than $44 million in dead cap space. If they trade him after June 1, they'd take less than $18 million in dead cap space. A difference of $26 million. Big deal.

So here's what the 49ers can do. They can trade Jimmy Garoppolo back to the New England Patriots, draft the best offensive lineman available with their 2021 first-round pick, draft the best quarterback available with their 2021 second-round pick, and then in the summer trade their 2022 second-round pick to the Falcons for Ryan. And he would cost the 49ers $23 million in 2021 and $24 million in 2022. And then the young quarterback could take over as the starter in 2023.

And if the 49ers want to get their 2022 first-round pick back, they always can trade Deebo Samuel for a No. 1 after next season.

Seems like the 49ers can get Ryan if they want him.

And they should want him. He would be a big-time upgrade over Garoppolo.

Published Jan 23, 2021

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.