Will the 49ers Trade Brock Purdy to the Rams for Matthew Stafford?
Bear with me on this one.
The Rams recently gave Matthew Stafford and his permission to seek a trade. Stafford presumably wants a contract extension and the Rams don’t seem to keen to commit themselves to a 37-year-old quarterback. So should the 49ers trade Brock Purdy for him?
The Rams most likely want a young quarterback to pair with their young, revamped roster. They reportedly would have drafted Bo Nix last year if he had fallen to them in Round 1. So maybe they would like Purdy who is similar to Nix.
Meanwhile, the 49ers are desperate to win a Super Bowl with their current core of aging veterans. They have a much older team than the Rams. And Stafford is a significantly better quarterback than Purdy.
Of course, Stafford also is 12 years older than Purdy, so trading for Stafford would be an all-in move. But why not go all in? Why not give this aging core its best chance to finally win a Super Bowl?
Trading for Stafford certainly would make the 49ers better immediately. That’s one big reason to make the trade. But would Stafford make the 49ers Super Bowl favorites? No, he wouldn’t. And that’s a big reason not to trade for Stafford.
The 49ers have held onto their aging core too long. They should have started rebuilding last year. And they’re going to regret it if they don’t start rebuilding this year.
The 49ers are much closer to missing the playoffs for the second season in a row than winning the Super Bowl.
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Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn’s channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers’ official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.
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