A SUPER STORY 49ers would have signed Rivers

After Thursday’s practice, Shanahan casually confirmed what would have been the most bonkers story in NFL history:

Had the 49ers won the NFC Championship game this past January, he would have likely signed Philip Rivers to come out of retirement to play quarterback in the Super Bowl.

“Yeah,” Shanahan said.

Wait, really?

“Yes.”

Rivers was on board?

“He was prepared to,” Shanahan said. “That’s stuff we talked about throughout the whole year. We would’ve had to see how that was for the Super Bowl, but that was the plan for most of the year.”

It’s crazy, but makes a lot of sense. With Purdy suffering a serious elbow injury, and Garoppolo not quite healed from his broken foot, the 49ers would only have had journeyman Josh Johnson or a hampered Garoppolo for the Super Bowl. Rivers with two weeks of practice would clearly have been a better option.

But Shanahan’s story does beg one question — why would Shanahan have those conversations with Rivers “throughout the whole year” when Garoppolo didn’t get hurt until December, and Purdy didn’t get hurt until late January? A plausible answer is that Shanahan kept in touch with Rivers throughout the season because he didn’t have much faith in Garoppolo staying healthy, and didn’t know what he had in Purdy, a rookie seventh-round pick.

Unfortunately, this incredible “What if ” never came to be, as the 49ers petered out in the NFC Championship game. But imagine that story — a 41year-old Rivers, now a high school football coach who hadn’t played in the NFL in two years, coming out of retirement to play in the Super Bowl for the first time in his 17-year career, with an entirely new team and coach.

It would have produced the greatest drama in Super Bowl history. Oh well.