The San Francisco 49ers have a general manager and would appear to have their head coach all but signed at this point. That means people are in place to begin the rebuilding process within the organization. There are numerous holes to fill, but the quarterback position is the most important.
The quarterback that will be on the radar fairly regularly the next couple months is Kirk Cousins. The Washington quarterback is likely to get the franchise tag for the second straight season, but the 49ers could still push for a potential trade. We have heard in the past about Kyle Shanahan’s interest in Cousins, and it now sounds like John Lynch might be a fan.
Washington Post columnist Dan Steinberg took a look back at Washington games this season where Lynch has been the color analyst. There are a lot of quotations to check out, but the most notable is this one from December.
“You know, there’s a lot of talk in Washington, should this be our guy moving forward, is he really [worth] a $20 million contract?” Lynch began. “You’ve got to take your head off the figure, off the number. I think that scares people. That’s the going rate, folks. You may not like it, but it’s the going rate for good quarterbacks. This guy is a really good quarterback. He’s earned the right, in my mind, to be the [Washington] quarterback moving forward.”
The quotations include some mentioning mistakes Cousins has made, but the praise is rather effusive. It resulted in tweets poking fun at his praise. Steinberg collected a few, but this was my favorite.
How much are Kirk Cousins' parents paying John Lynch?
— Rivers McCown (@riversmccown) October 16, 2016
I don’t recall off hand what Lynch has had to say about Colin Kaepernick. If somebody wants to check it out and write up a FanPost, by all means, have at it. If not, at some point we’ll give it a listen. I still think Kaepernick is likely out the door, but it will be interesting to compare some of the comments.
In the meantime, will we see the 49ers make a trade offer for Cousins? They would not exactly be operating from a position of strong leverage. I imagine most everybody knows Shanahan is interested, and now we see that Lynch has made his interest obvious. It is kind of hard to bluff from such a situation.