The San Francisco 49ers will be without their star edge rusher Nick Bosa for the rest of the season after he tore his ACL in Week 3.
This terrible news may make the Niners regret not pulling off a trade for All-Pro edge Micah Parsons even if it would have been difficult.
The news on Bosa is brutal for so many reasons. Along with linebacker Fred Warner, Bosa is a leader and a massive presence on San Francisco's defense. He does so much and forces opposing teams to account for him on the defensive line, so losing him has ramifications for the rest of the defense.
Other edge rushers like Bryce Huff and Mykel Williams are going to be forced to step up for the time being, but general manager John Lynch and the front office probably cannot help but wish they had pushed a little harder with the Dallas Cowboys to make a trade for Parsons happen, even if it's easy to look back in hindsight and even if it would have been difficult to outbid Parsons' new team, the Green Bay Packers.
49ers must regret not trading for Micah Parsons now
Lynch acknowledged the Niners kicked the tires on Parsons, but if you read between the lines of his comments, it seems the team was not in a financial place to make that trade as they were putting money towards other players in the offseason while largely trying to tighten the belt and rely more on younger talent.
The massive extension Parsons subsequently got from the Packers is something the Niners were almost certainly unwilling to dole out.
That approach has its merits, but in light of the Bosa injury it now seems like San Francisco is not adequately equipped to stomach his loss on defense. Trading for Parsons would have been some sort of cosmic justice for the 49ers trading edge rusher Charles Haley to the Cowboys back in the 1990s, which had ramifications for years to come.
It is questionable whether Dallas owner Jerry Jones would have even entertained trading Parsons to the 49ers, given the storied rivalry between the two franchises. However, he ended up trading him to the Green Bay Packers, a team that certainly has a contentious history with the Cowboys, so he was ultimately willing to trade him to a potential NFC contender.
All of this is easy to gripe about in hindsight, but the Niners are now in a tough spot after losing Bosa. Maybe other players can step up, or they can make a trade to try and help out the pass rush.
But there will surely be a lingering sense of "what if" on Parsons.