The 49ers are lucky they have a great team. They’re even luckier that, with the last pick on the 2022 draft, they threw a dart and it landed on a potential franchise quarterback.
Still, none of this changes the fact that the 49ers committed a historic blunder by trading up from No. 12 to No. 3 in the 2021 draft and picking quarterback Trey Lance. Usually, it’s bad teams that make mistakes like this. No elite team had ever bungled a move at the top of the draft that badly.
That’s not to say Lance is a bust. We don’t know what Lance is, what he will be. We know that, after only two seasons, the 49ers abandoned ship on Lance, turning three first-round picks, a third-round pick, and $27 million into a fourth-round pick.
“Obviously we took our shot and it didn’t work out,” coach Kyle Shanahan told reporters after Friday night’s game against the Chargers. “So, that’s on us for that. But I’m not going to say anything as in ‘failure.’ That’d be too much of a negative towards Trey. I get our deal. We took a shot to go for that. We were hoping that he could be our guy and that didn’t work out.”
But it was a failure, and the negative should be towards Shanahan and whoever else advised him to: (1) make the trade; and (2) take the player. The mere act of moving up and making such an investment in one player puts inordinate pressure on everyone, especially the player.
Think of what they gave up. They packaged the 12th overall pick and two more first-rounders along with a third-rounder for one guy who appeared in eight games, with four starts. They could have stayed put and let the board play out, keeping their other picks and taking the best guy available at No. 12.
Those two other first-round picks and that third-round pick could have become significant contributors for the 49ers, at a low cost relative to what quality veterans command.
But they got desperate. After witnessing one quarterback Shanahan refused to scout (Patrick Mahomes) play another quarterback Shanahan politely declined to sign (Tom Brady) in the Super Bowl, Shanahan decided to go all in. And it blew up in his face like a loaded cartoon cigar.
It’s a failure. Plain and simple. A series of them, actually.
It was a failure to not scout Mahomes. It was a failure to trade for Jimmy Garoppolo in lieu of waiting for Kirk Cousins. It was a failure to pass on Tom Brady, it was a failure to trade up, and it was a failure to take Lance.
The only thing Shanahan has gotten right when it comes to quarterbacks was a look-what-I-found accident, a flier taken on a player who was available for the last pick in the draft for a reason. But that’s not strategy or skill. It’s dumb luck.
Some say it’s better to be lucky than good. Bullcrap, I say. Good lasts. Fortunately for Shanahan, the 49ers are good. Even more fortunately for Shanahan, he got lucky at the most important position on the field — after stepping on more rakes than Sideshow Bob.
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August 27, 2023 at 02:04AM
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49ers close books on historic draft blunder - NBC Sports
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