Kyle Shanahan offered the No. 2 pick to Washington for Kirk Cousins, Washington didn’t return the phone call

Well, I’ve said before the Washington Commanders and Kyle Shanahan don’t play nice.

Everyone knows before Jimmy Garoppolo finished the 2017 season of the San Francisco 49ers, the first season for head coach Kyle Shanahan, the plan was for the 49ers to acquire then Washington Commanders quarterback Kirk Cousins. The 49ers tried to get a trade going and out of pettiness to Shanahan, The Commanders didn’t even listen.

Well we have some more details.

Per The Athletic’s Alec Lewis in a conversation with Kyle’s father Mike Shanahan, the 49ers offered the Commanders a first round pick. As in, the second pick of the 2017 draft. There’s not much more on what in return the 49ers wanted besides Kirk Cousins but for something that rich there had to be some other moving parts potentially involved.

It never really got that far because the Commanders didn’t even return Shanahan’s phone call. From Lewis’ article:

That offseason, Kyle Shanahan, who had been named the head coach for the San Francisco 49ers after stops in Cleveland and Atlanta, tried to trade the No. 2 pick in the 2017 draft for Cousins, according to Mike Shanahan. “He knew Kirk knew his system, and he knew the type of guy Kirk was,” Mike Shanahan said. “But (Washington) wouldn’t even return the phone call.”

So not only did Kyle Shanahan pass on the likes of Patrick Mahomes and Deshaun Watson with that third pick and instead take defensive lineman Solomon Thomas, he was going to initially use that pick for Cousins. To be fair, we didn’t know how Watson or Mahomes would have turned out and hindsight is always 20:20, but that is rich for a quarterback that won’t be on a rookie deal and needs a massive extension.

As I said above, it’s a good bet there may have been some other parts involved for Cousins rather than the 2nd pick straight up. Given that Cousins was at the end of his rookie deal and the third pick was the third pick, I’d imagine the 49ers maybe packaged something to get something back if they gave up such prime real estate. Maybe a pick swap and a 2nd and/or third rounder and Cousins. Then again, former Commanders head coach Jay Gruden said a while back he though the Commanders could get multiple first rounders for the quarterback.

And we know how aggressive the 49ers get when they see someone they want.

Regardless of what the deal was, we know how it went. Because of his own personal feud with the Shanahans, then-owner Dan Snyder didn’t even want to discuss a trade. What was hilarious about this on Washington’s end was how they franchise tagged Cousins not once, but twice just to keep him out of San Francisco. A team franchise-tagging a quarterback twice in a row is doing a number on their salary cap because that’s not cheap.

Regardless, it’s just another piece of the puzzle on how the 49ers tried to get Cousins. We knew they wanted Cousins, and the plan was to sign him whenever Washington was done franchise tagging him. Then Jimmy Garoppolo came in and you know what happened next.

But the 49ers were going to offer the second pick in an NFL Draft and the Commanders didn’t even want to hear it. That’s some pettiness right there.