How the 49ers Can Make a Trade for Deshaun Watson Work

The deal would cost the 49ers at least three first round picks and probably six picks total, not to mention all the money Watson would cost the 49ers.

Grant Cohn | Jan 17, 2021

Initially, I was against the idea of the 49ers trading for Houston Texans quarterback Deshaun Watson.

The deal would cost the 49ers at least three first round picks and probably six picks total, not to mention all the money Watson would cost the 49ers. He signed a four-year, $160 million extension in September. He's extremely expensive.

But that extension technically does not kick in until 2022. Meaning Watson technically won't earn much cash in 2021 by NFL superstar quarterback standards. So if the 49ers were to trade for him, they'd have to pay him "only" $10.94 million in 2021, or roughly 6 percent of their salary cap space.

A tremendous bargain.

So I've changed my mind. Here's what I would do if I were 49ers general manager:

I would cut Jimmy Garoppolo and create $24 million in cap space. Then I would trade whatever it takes to get Watson so I could pay him $10.94 million next season. And with the money I saved, I would improve the offensive line. And maybe the 49ers would win the Super Bowl. They'd had a terrific chance.

And then in 2022, when Watson would be scheduled to make a whopping $35 million and take up more than 15 percent of the 49ers cap space, I would trade him and recoup all the draft capital I gave up to get him.

Watson would be a one-year rental.

Sound crazy?

What's more crazy would be paying him 15 percent of the 49ers' cap space. Because no quarterback in the history of free agency has won a Super Bowl while taking up more than 13.1 percent of his team's cap space.

One player never should take up 15 percent of a team's cap space, no matter how great that player is. And Watson isn't even the best quarterback in the league. He's borderline top five.

So rent his services for one season and then ship him out of town. He would be a phenomenal one-year solution at quarterback.

Published Jan 17, 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.