NFL negotiating rumors: Peter King believes the 49ers should be all-in in Deshaun Watson’s negotiations

Peter King of NBC Sports gave his idea of ​​what it might take for a team to negotiate with Houston Texans’ QB Deshaun Watson. King mentioned what everyone else has: Texans have received offers from teams, but Houston is not engaging. King said at least two teams had made offers to Houston and had received no feedback.

How long will Houston stay on? There is no real reason for the Texans to give in. Watson is under contract, and that doesn’t change, no matter how he feels about the state of the franchise. The NFL Draft is just over two months away. A lot can happen between now and then.

The poker face of Texans GM Nick Caserio may change as the draft approaches and he realizes that his 25-year QB franchise was not bluffing about taking the field as a Texan member again, which leads us to King’s commercial proposals .

King mentioned the Carolina Panthers, the New York Jets, the Miami Dolphins and the San Francisco 49ers … twice.

One of his wild proposals included an exchange of three teams, where the Minnesota Vikings send Kirk Cousins ​​to the Niners. In this scenario, San Francisco also sends No. 12 to Houston and quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo. This is the only part that belongs to 49ers. I doubt anyone would feel confident that San Francisco took the lead in this commercial proposition.

Here is King’s first trade proposal, where the 49ers win Watson:

SAN FRANCISCO 49ERS. San Francisco would accept entering 2021 with Jimmy Garoppolo as your initiator. But no matter what Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch say, they can’t be totally comfortable with that. Garoppolo has lost 23 of the last 48 games of the regular season due to injuries. (Tom Brady lost 15 games due to injury in 20 seasons.) And I always wonder if the 49ers have the least buyer remorse for not having triggered a deal with Brady last March. We’ll know when Brady (or Lynch or Shanahan) wrote a book in 15 years how close it got. But if the Niners were able to convince Garoppolo to waive the no-trade clause, I could imagine that San Francisco was fully involved, although the Niners clearly needed to dispose of some important resources, perhaps including the young nerve center of their defense. Defender Fred Warner is a rising star, however, that his rehiring in San Francisco in the next 12 months could affect the franchise’s ability to retain other great young players (Nick Bosa?) at home.

Peter King proposal: Seven by 1. Garoppolo, linebacker Fred Warner (it hurts a lot), tackle Mike McGlinchey, first round choices in 2021 (12th overall) and 2022, plus a second round choice in 2021 and a third round choice in 2022 for Watson. It is too much for the Niners to pay; of all the players in all the deals I’m proposing, Warner would be the most coveted in my book. But he is here because he is entering the last year of his newbie contract and would like a new one. (McGlinchey is also in exactly the same position.) Houston could see them as a foundation for reconstruction.

The way King frames Warner in this exchange resembles the team’s thought process moving DeForest Buckner last season. He is also accurate with regard to Warner’s value. Seeing the Niners split from the best NFL linebacker would be difficult for many fans to swallow. Seeing Watson in the center in return would make those same fans forget about Warner in the first month of the season.

I love Warner and I think he is still underrated. We are talking about a linebacker versus a quarterback, however. In Watson’s case, this is objectively one of the top 5, at worst, NFL quarterback. There is no comparison here.

So Houston gets Warner and McGlinchey on a rookie deal, two first round choices, a second round and a third round choice in ’22. The downside is that you create two main holes on both sides of the ball, and now you don’t have three premium draft choices in the next two years to fill those holes.

Another issue is to assume that this trade does not happen until the first wave of free agency ends. This means that San Francisco misses the opportunity to hire any unrestricted free agent on the linebacker or tackle and is entering this year’s NFL Draft trying to find a holder on Day 3 in both positions.

Daniel Brunskill back on the right? Colton McKivitz? The shuffling would go straight to the Niners, but you bet Watson will be able to overcome McGlinchey’s loss. We saw the 49ers operate without the first two offensive tackles in 19 for several games.

If you are at the camp that wants Watson, you are not getting it cheaply. These are the types of deals needed to get the superstar defender. In King’s scenario, would you accept this exchange?