A mid-round focus? Examining the 49ers' potential NFL Draft strategy (2024)

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The San Francisco 49ers seem to have many options at their disposal when the NFL Draft starts tonight. How can we expect them to proceed over the next three days?

Revisiting history is a good starting point. Let’s go back to the 49ers’ first draft under general manager John Lynch in 2017. That certainly set a frenetic tone. The 49ers traded a staggering six times during the event.

First, they moved back from pick No. 2 to No. 3, netting two additional mid-round selections in the process (before picking defensive lineman Solomon Thomas at No. 3). Then, they used one of those picks as part of a package to trade back up into the end of the first round to pick linebacker Reuben Foster at No. 31. The 49ers’ next four maneuvers, a combination of trades up and down, didn’t follow a specific pattern. When the dust had settled, the three-day stretch yielded Lynch’s first draft class, a 10-player haul.

That 2017 draft was a proper introduction to Lynch’s propensity to wheel and deal. We now know that it was not a masterclass in talent acquisition. Of the 10 draftees, only tight end George Kittle and defensive tackle D.J. Jones — fifth- and sixth-round picks, respectively — stuck with the 49ers beyond their rookie contracts. Although the 49ers can take solace in the fact that quarterback C.J. Beathard, whom they traded up for in 2017’s third round, left in free agency after the 2020 season to produce the compensatory seventh-round selection that they used in 2022 for QB Brock Purdy.

The 49ers have built the bulk of their current core over the six drafts since — and the trades, though not as frequent as they were that first year, have kept on flowing.

Some didn’t ultimately yield desired results, such as a trade up within 2018’s second round to pick receiver Dante Pettis and the 2021 pre-draft blockbuster that moved three first-round picks for the No. 3 selection — used for quarterback Trey Lance. But others, like 2020’s move up from No. 31 to No. 24 for receiver Brandon Aiyuk, were successful.

And that, fittingly, sets the table for the beginning of this 2024 draft. Aiyuk, who wants a lucrative contract extension just as he’s generated trade interest from other teams, is again in the spotlight, this time as a potential hinge point of the 49ers’ draft plans.

Let’s assume Aiyuk stays put. What can we expect Lynch to do with this year’s collection of 10 picks, the first of which comes at No. 31? The 49ers feel confident they have optionality at their disposal again.

Two clues might help us conceptualize the 49ers’ bigger-picture outlook.

The first: It seems the 49ers didn’t host many prospects projected to be picked in the first round. Only two, Western Michigan defensive end Marshawn Kneeland and Clemson cornerback Nate Wiggins, were reported to be part of the 49ers’ list of 30 visits. That might suggest Lynch doesn’t anticipate trading up, though it must be noted that only 23 visits have been reported, which leaves up to seven unaccounted for.

The second clue: Lynch plainly said this isn’t a deep draft because so many more players than initially expected — 83 by the 49ers’ count — decided to return to college for the 2024 season.

“I think the later rounds are going to be lacking,” Lynch said.

Combining those two nuggets, we can surmise the 49ers believe they can make the most hay in the middle of this draft. Six of their 10 picks come between No. 31 and the end of the fourth round, so they’re equipped to take swings over that stretch. And Lynch said the team has first-round grades on 22 prospects, a bit more than they usually do, which means there’s a decent chance at least one of those players will be available when the 49ers are first scheduled to be on the clock.

Will the 49ers, who already have a roster loaded with a lot of talent, lean toward consolidating picks to trade up, or will they defer to the crapshoot nature of the draft and instead trend toward amassing as many picks as possible?

The team has executed a mixture of both during Lynch’s tenure, although trades up have been more common during the draft itself. The 49ers have focused on working the compensatory formula as their primary avenue of amassing picks, and Lynch acknowledged the difficultly of fitting players onto the 53-man roster may indeed play into the team’s strategy this week.

“We’ve got to be smart with that in terms of how we allocate our resources,” he said. “We have 10 picks. You start asking yourself, ‘How many of those can make our team and how do we want to approach that?'”

Any discussion of roster-building strategy must acknowledge a team’s most pressing need, especially if that team is a Super Bowl contender. The 49ers’ most glaring statistical weakness last season came in pass protection, where they ranked in the bottom third of the NFL across multiple metrics. That’s led to the most popular line of speculation regarding the 49ers’ draft plans: that they’ll spend significant draft capital on the offensive line, especially because they didn’t spend heavily there during free agency.

“The interesting thing with those linemen in this draft — we think a lot of them have flexibility to be tackles and or guards,” Lynch said. “So that’s nice that you take somebody with some versatility. I think there are some options and part of the draft, you’re not always drafting for the immediate. Sometimes it’s drafting for future needs. So we have to be cognizant of that.”

Those remarks might hint that the 49ers, given their collection of picks, might not believe a huge splash up front is feasible. They seem compatible with the two earlier clues, which suggest Lynch is confident doing the bulk of his work in the middle of this draft.

Don’t expect maneuvers and picks within that territory to generate huge fanfare. But these coming selections can serve a vital purpose for the 49ers, whose good track record in the draft’s middle rounds meshes well with their desire to infuse the margins of the roster with cost-controlled youth. Lynch believes such picks can energize the current roster and develop into more prominent roles over the next few years.

“There’s good players and that’s our job to find that because you have to have that,” Lynch said. “As many of our players as we’ve paid, you have to rely on rookie contracts. And so, we need to infuse all those things and we need some players to come out of this draft because they’re going to be playing next year and into the future. And that opportunity’s there.”

(Top photo of John Lynch: Greg Fiume / Getty Images)