49ers are playing the waiting game for Cousins
The 49ers’ quarterback of the future literally won’t be a 49er until the future, though the clock on that is about to really start ticking.
Kirk Cousins is Washington’s quarterback, not the 49ers’, may never be a 49er, and the 49ers have zero right to talk with him at the moment.
However, there might not be a more significant practical moment for this franchise than Monday at 1 p.m. PDT, which is the deadline for Cousins and Washington to agree to a long-term deal in this calendar year, or else he will operate on
the one-year franchise-tag salary of $23.9 million for the soon-approaching 2017 season.
And then?
Well, let’s just point out that if a Pro Bowl quarterback and his current team can’t come to a longterm agreement over several years of negotiations — and this would be Cousins’ second consecutive year on the franchise-tag — there are usually builtup tensions along the way.
The way the NFL’s franchise-tag system works, if there’s no long-term deal by Monday, Cousins will hit the market as either a restricted or unrestricted free agent in 2018, and it seems probable that he will probably want to leave Washington at that point.
The likeliest scenario from there: A trade or just a flat-out free-agent departure to the team Cousins really wants to join … in Spring 2018.
By the way, new 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan has a great relationship with Cousins from when they were together in Washington for two seasons and believes Cousins is a great fit for his offensive system.
And we can all see how carefully the 49ers have maneuvered around the quarterback position in Shanahan’s first few months here.
Brian Hoyer was brought on as the starter-for-this-year, but with a two-year contract that is equivalent to what a good backup makes. Matt Barkley was signed as the No. 2-for-this-year, but he’s realistically a No. 3 on any team with quarterback depth.
C.J. Beathard was drafted in the third round this year, but if anything his top-side projection is to maybe develop into a good backup in two or three years.
Yes, it is very possible that Shanahan and general manager John Lynch have had their eyes on Cousins from the moment they signed their dual six-year deals to run the 49ers, and the major theoretical impediment to that plan was a potential longterm deal between Cousins and Washington this offseason.
By the way, the 49ers don’t even have to try that hard to know what’s going on with the Cousins-Washington talks: He is represented by Priority Sports, the firm that also happens to represent … Kyle Shanahan.
So just by osmosis Cousins’ camp knows that if he plays out the franchise tag this season, the 49ers will presumably be there patiently waiting for him in February or March.
You might ask, is Cousins, at 28 years, worth all this? Is somebody who has never won a playoff game really the best-case quarterback scenario long term for the 49ers?
My answer: The 49ers have given Shanahan the keys to the franchise, he’s a quarterback expert, and they desperately need an answer at quarterback for tomorrow, the next year, and many years after that.
If Shanahan believes it’s Cousins, then they have to trust him. And be patient along with him.
I believe Shanahan is the first 49ers coach to really trust on something like this since Jim Harbaugh came on board in 2011 and moved to re-sign Alex Smith and nudged the team into drafting Colin Kaepernick in the second round of that draft.
So: Will Cousins sign a long-term deal with Washington before Monday’s deadline? I don’t know, that’s what negotiations are for, and it’s possible Washington’s management could come up with more dollars at the last moment.
The market-rate: It would have to be more than $25 million a year for at least five years; it would have to be a pure guarantee of more than $50 million and it would have to total more than the $125 million Derek Carr deal just landed with the Raiders.
And if there is no deal, then Cousins is on the franchise tag; once the season is over, Washington could franchise tag him yet again; but that would lead to a 40 percent raise — to $34.5 million — and that is a tough one for any team to swallow.
Or more likely, Washington could use the transition tag, which would guarantee Cousins a 20 percent raise to $28.7 million and give Washington the right to match anybody else’s offer.
Of course, almost nobody in the NFL has more cap room projected for the 2018 offseason than the 49ers, and again, everybody in the league knows this.
The 49ers are set up to make a massive offer to Cousins if he’s a restricted free agent, and that would not be a good development for Washington.
So if Cousins clearly doesn’t want to remain with Washington, the 49ers could solve all of this by offering a good draft pick to Washington, which could drop all franchise or transition tag rights, then the 49ers could sign Cousins to a long-term deal.
And 2018 begins with the quarterback the 49ers wanted all along.
That is, if Cousins doesn’t land a long-term deal with Washington on Monday. The clock is ticking for that negotiation, and if it expires without a new deal, Cousins and the 49ers will be the next ones on the clock for 2018.