Don’t expect 49ers to trade Nick Mullens after 2020 NFL Draft

The San Francisco 49ers could have sold high on backup quarterback Nick Mullens before or during the 2020 NFL Draft. It didn’t happen, though, and it likely won’t moving forward.

If the San Francisco 49ers were interested in trading off quarterback Nick Mullens, they would have done so by now.

Leading up to the 2020 NFL Draft, The Athletic’s Michael Lombardi reported the Niners turned down multiple trade offers for Mullens, the undrafted free agent who surprised well enough late in 2018 to help alleviate what was otherwise a lost season following the team’s starter, Jimmy Garoppolo, suffering a season-ending ACL tear in Week 3.

If San Francisco wanted to move Mullens, denying requests before the draft would have made some sense. After all, desperation tends to uptick once the draft begins and teams miss out on targets they otherwise thought they could have landed in any of the seven rounds.

But that didn’t happen either. And since it didn’t, don’t expect the 49ers to move Mullens anytime soon.

There are a few reasons to come to this conclusion. For starters, Mullens is cheap. He recently signed his exclusive-rights free-agent tender, which is a misleading term, as ERFAs are only allowed to negotiate with teams holding their rights. Those players aren’t free agents at all. And it means he’ll play 2020 on a one-year, $750,000 deal.

That’s awfully cheap for a competent backup. With the Niners now dealing with salary cap restraints for the first time since the first half of the 2010s, saving money has to be considered a priority.

Mullens also beat out fellow backup quarterback C.J. Beathard for the No. 2 job behind Garoppolo. While no team wants to field a backup during the regular season, having the contingency plan in place is wise. Beathard and his 1-9 starter’s record at the NFL level doesn’t suggest he’s a solid part of that contingency, even though the Niners kept him on the 53-man roster a year ago.

Beathard, if cut, could save San Francisco nearly $950,000 against $176,572 in dead money. A near-million is a lot to pay for an underwhelming backup, and Beathard is poised to hit the free-agent market in 2021 anyway.

Regardless of Beathard’s future, he’s not a viable backup option. Mullens is.

A little less than a year from now, the 49ers could apply a first- or second-round restricted free-agent tender on Mullens, paying him a qualifying offer of $4.641 million or $3.259 million, respectively. Should another team want to outbid the Niners, that team would have to give up the associated pick in exchange.

Mullens for a first- or second-round NFL Draft pick would be fine from San Francisco’s vantage point. And the 49ers likely understand this, perhaps even asking for that kind of compensation when the teams Lombardi mentioned were inquiring about a would-be Mullens trade.

With the 2021 salary cap expected to increase nearly 40 percent from the near-$200 million where it currently stands, the associated money projected for an RFA-tendered Mullens is easier to absorb.

The other wrinkle in this is San Francisco signing another undrafted free-agent quarterback, Broc Rutter, out of a Division III school, North Central College. Perhaps this helps set the line to replace Mullens down the road, if the 49ers are actually intending on moving him at some point in 2021 or 2022.

Just don’t expect any Mullens trade anytime soon.