After last season, the San Francisco 49ers looked at all of their quarterback options heading into free agency and the draft. At the time, the team owned the No. 12 overall pick, and the quarterback they were falling in love with, Trey Lance, probably wasn't going to fall that far. So the Niners did their due diligence on all possibilities, including a pre-draft call to the Green Bay Packers to see what was going on with Aaron Rodgers.
Before that, reports often linked San Francisco to other quarterbacks like Matthew Stafford and Deshaun Watson. Head coach Kyle Shanahan already admitted to being interested in the former, saying that he was trying to get the 49ers involved in the talks for the former Detroit Lions quarterback. However, much to Shanahan's disappointment, the Lions traded Stafford before that could happen.
Stafford did land in the NFC West, though — with the rival Los Angeles Rams. So Shanahan will get to see him twice a year.
"You found out there was rumors he was going to be available," Shanahan explained to reporters today. "It started to get somewhat serious, just like kind of Deshaun was at the time. Those are the people you're looking at, just making sure you're ready for that. And you see how good he is. Then you go to sleep, and you wake up, and he's on the Rams the next day. That was a little frustrating."
The coach's comments might indicate that he also considered a play for Watson. If so, that likely ended when legal issues surfaced for the Houston Texans quarterback.
San Francisco ended up trading up nine spots in the draft to select Lance with the No. 3 overall pick. The 21-year-old quarterback remains unsigned as of this post but figures to enter training camp and the regular season as Jimmy Garoppolo's backup — whenever he puts pen to paper.
Shanahan made it clear that there is no quarterback competition brewing in Santa Clara.
"There's no open competition right now in terms of they're getting equal reps with the same group," Shanahan said via Kirk Larrabee. "Jimmy's coming in as the one, and Trey's coming in as the two."
