Well, this is a wild one.
According to Ian Rapoport – not one for concocting crazy, no-basis-in-reality trade rumors – Dallas, Washington, and San Francisco are discussing a three-team trade that would send Tony Romo to Washington, Kirk Cousins to San Francisco, and draft picks to Dallas.
My first reaction is that if Dallas is willing to send Romo to division rival Washington, that’s probably a bad sign for what they think Romo can be going forward. After all, even for draft picks, it’s not like the Cowboys want to bend over backwards to help a team that’s going to try to knock them off the top of the standings.
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But, even if I can get past that peccadillo, you have to wonder what draft picks we’re talking about here. Cousins, even on his one-year franchise tag, would seem to have more value than Romo – who may well be released if he’s not traded – and that’s especially true if Cousins is willing to sign a long-term deal with the 49ers, which you’d think the 49ers would demand if they were going to part with a significant draft pick package. Figuring out how to make that work for all three teams is going to be very difficult.
If something like this went down, though, the implications for the quarterback market are dramatic. The 49ers would have their long-term answer at the position, changing not only their offseason efforts but also perhaps their draft strategy. Romo would have gone to another team without reaching free agency and throwing that whole side of things for a loop.
On the balance, this would seem to be a good thing for the Bears, who are probably not going to be in the mix for Romo (despite rumors to the contrary), and who haven’t been seriously connected to Cousins in rumors (well, until this CSN report today that suggests Cousins is actually the team’s number one QB target (which we just heard this week about Mike Glennon, and previously heard about Jimmy Garoppolo)).
In other words, this kind of deal would seem to shrink the pool of teams seeking a QB without taking a legitimate Bears option off the board.
So … make it happen!
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