Wow. This is big. But I like this trade for 9ers. Get what you can and walk away from a mistake. They've done plenty of good. This won't kill the franchise.
While I do agree that a player of his pedigree who isn’t even out of their rookie contract should be a great insurance policy, he did get beat out by Darnold as the second string. Strictly from a cap perspective, paying a third string quarterback a first round rookie contract is not ideal.
A QB drafted in the first round usually gathers interests from teams until they are completely done. Paxton Lynch and Johnny Manziel are the only QBs drafted in the first round in the past 9 not in the league, and Lynch at least got some tryouts. I’m excluding Haskins from this because he would most likely have stuck around in Pittsburg.
He's not unknown - they've got multiple years of Trey Lance in practice. We don't get to see most of that but the 9ers staff do and they've decided he's not good enough to start.