Brock Purdy and the San Francisco 49ers take on Kirk Cousins and the Minnesota Vikings on Monday Night Football to close Week 7. The teams and the QBs are in very different spots heading into this battle, but reportedly, if a few things went slightly different over the past five years, this game could have featured Purdy and the Vikings taking on Cousins and the 49ers.

Kirk Cousins was a fourth-round pick of the Washington Commanders in 2012 when current 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan was the team’s offensive coordinator. Shanahan built Cousins into the signal-caller he is today, and when he took over in San Francisco, the coach looked into bringing in Cousins, according to an ESPN report by Kevin Seifert and Nick Wagoner.

“The 49ers reached out to Washington about trading for Cousins in 2017, hoping to capitalize on the connection between Shanahan and the quarterback,” the report notes. “Speculation then moved to 2018, when Cousins was set to hit the free agent market, but by then Shanahan had acquired Jimmy Garoppolo from the New England Patriots.”

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Jimmy G would lead to Trey Lance in the Bay Area, and Brock Purdy would follow Lance. However, if the Niners hadn’t decided to scoop Purdy up with the final pick of the 2022 NFL Draft, “Mr. Irrelevant” could have been wearing purple on Monday night.

“In 2022, the Vikings extended Cousins' contract and, according to multiple sources, heavily pursued a rookie quarterback from Iowa State named Brock Purdy in the final hours of the draft, hoping to sign him to a UDFA deal,” Seifert and Wagoner revealed. “Purdy told ESPN last week he was considering the 49ers, Houston Texans and Vikings if he had gone undrafted. The 49ers, however, swooped in and made Purdy the final selection of the seventh round.”

When the Vikings and 49ers square off on Monday Night Football in Week 7, it will be interesting for fans of both teams to close their eyes for just a moment and think about what could have been if these two signal-callers ended up on the opposite sideline.