There doesn’t seem to be any question about quarterback Brock Purdy’s future with the San Francisco 49ers.
All indicators are the team is happy with his development and that his contract extension will get done in the offseason. However, the specter of Kirk Cousins always looms given how central he was to head coach Kyle Shanahan’s team-building strategy when he arrived in San Francisco in 2017.
The 49ers have been connected to him multiple times since, but there’s never been a reunion between Shanahan and the QB Washington selected in the fourth round of the 2012 draft when Shanahan was their offensive coordinator. With Cousins potentially hitting free agency again after getting benched this year by the Atlanta Falcons, it was easy to once again draw a line between him and Shanahan, even as a backup for Purdy.
It doesn’t appear Cousins will have to resort to taking a backup job just yet though.
ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler in an appearance on Kevin Clark’s ‘This is Football’ speculated the Browns would be a logical landing spot for Cousins while Deshaun Watson recovers from a torn Achilles.
“I’m thinking of Cleveland,” Fowler said. “I think the Kirk Cousins situation in Atlanta could be mana from heaven for Cleveland because it’s Russell Wilson all over again. There’s a scenario where you could get Kirk Cousins for a million dollars. When you’re paying Deshaun Watson 46 million a year, that’s a great bargain that you need. You’d have two quarterbacks coming off Achilles issues — that’s not ideal. But we’ve seen it. Kirk Cousins can operate Kevin Stefanski’s offense. We’ve seen it in Minnesota, he’s had success, they’ve had success together. It just makes a lot of sense. While Deshaun is — whether he’s gonna play or not for the Browns — he still has to recover from an Achilles issue, and that’s going to take time. So you have to get a veteran in there.”
Purdy’s contract situation has already moved to the top of the 49ers’ list of headlines now that their postseason hopes are over. It’ll continue to be a topic of conversation until he signs a long-term deal with the team.
It sounds for now though like the Cousins wrinkle won’t be a factor as long as there are teams like the Browns willing to take him in as a starter.
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