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“He processes the game so well,” Shanahan told King. “Tough as (expletive). Got a chance. He reminds me a lot of Kirk Cousins.”

(Another QB comparison seemingly baffled Beathard: “Oh my god,” he told King about a link to Joe Montana.“That is crazy. Wow. Joe Montana. Wow.”)

So what does Beathard do like Cousins, the Washington QB whom the 49ers have repeatedly been linked to since Shanahan’s arrival?

Off the bat: both were two-plus year starters for Big 10 teams — Iowa and Michigan State, respectively — and they have similar frames (6-foot-2, 219 lbs. and 6-3, 210).

49ers general manager John Lynch laid out more similarities in depth Monday on KNBR:

1) Toughness: “He’s extremely tough. When you watch him play, he stays in there, face in the fan as we like to say, with guys coming. He’s not afraid to do that; he does it over and over.”

2) Throwing motion and general awareness: “He’s very accurate. It’s a quick release and a powerful torque there in his throwing motion, and he can do it without having to have a lot of space. It’s one thing Kyle really appreciates about quarterbacks, when they don’t need all the space in front of them to make throws because the reality in this league, I mean, defensive line play is as good as ever and it’s hard to find good offensive lineman. There’s gonna be people in your face. Even though (Beathard’s) numbers went down his senior year, he demonstrated an ability to do that.”

3) Processing (as Shanahan told King): “He’s a guy we really liked the processing, the quick processing… I think that’s another thing that reminded Kyle of that type of a guy.”

So Lynch went out and snagged Beathard in the third round, before others expected the Iowa QB to go. Related Articles With Brian Hoyer in fold, 49ers can let Kirk Cousins situation play out

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“As I mentioned, we didn’t have ranked as high as a third-rounder — we wanted to get him in the fourth — but we had too many picks, frankly, to just sit there and take players,” Lynch told KNBR. “I said, ‘Guys, c’mon, we can do this easily. Let’s go get someone we all like and to heck with the perceptions.'”

The optics of selecting a player similar to Cousins are either foreshadowing to next season, if the 49ers pursue the quarterback in free agency, or that the team just found a Cousins clone instead.