Kurtenbach: The 49ers are all-in on the worst NFL Draft in a decade
The 49ers’ offseason has been a dizzying effort to both get worse and not sign their so-called franchise quarterback.
And all the while, general manager John Lynch has presented the 2025 NFL Draft as a panacea for the team’s problems.
“We’ve got this thing called the draft and we’ve got a lot of picks,” Lynch told this news organization last month. “We have a plan and we’re going to execute that plan. We’re excited about the opportunity.”
On a macro level, the 49ers’ plan is the “Rams Plan” (though it’s more like the Cowboys Scheme), but on a micro level — the day-to-day, nitty-gritty — the plan is simply The Draft.
And after spending countless hours studying everyone from the Heisman Trophy winner to the longsnapper at the Colorado School of Mines (Josh Wojciechowicz might get drafted, folks), I can unequivocally provide one macro insight:
This isn’t a good draft class.
That isn’t to say there aren’t good players — you can find them. And there are certainly positions of strong depth (running back, defensive tackle) where teams can find value in this class.
But on the whole, this draft’s talent pales in comparison to recent years.
Day 2 players will be taken in the first round. Day 3 players will be taken in the second and third rounds.
In a good draft, those roles are reversed.
The dip in draft pool talent makes sense. Seemingly endless eligibility and being able to be paid above-the-table in college makes staying in school a more attractive offer for young players.
The top quarterback in this class — Cam Ward — is a great case in point. He was poised to be a Day 2 or 3 pick coming out of Washington State last season. Instead, he took millions from Miami and improved his draft stock to where he’ll go No. 1 overall.
Or look at his replacement at The U: Carson Beck was supposed to be the top pick in the 2025 NFL Draft — only he didn’t play well for Georgia. Instead of coming out of school and being picked far later than he expected only a few months ago, he also took a bag from Miami and will try to rebuild his draft stock with another college season.
And it goes down the chain, too. Former Stanford linebacker David Bailey recently signed with Texas Tech as a transfer.
He could have been a solid Day 3 pick. He was one of my favorite take-a-flyer prospects. But why go to the NFL, where if you’re picked after No. 135, you’re making less than $1 million a year, when you can make something close to that with the mere threat of transferring (much less with the actual transfer-portal bidding war)? Perhaps your stock goes up playing another year in college. Maybe it goes down, but you’re just as rich. I don’t see the downside to staying in school.
It leaves the draft pool with a top-heavy talent base. You have roughly 70 non-seniors in the pool, and perhaps five won’t be picked in the top four rounds.
Why is this a problem for the 49ers?
It might not be — if they nail this draft. The quality of the player pool doesn’t matter if you select the right players.
But the issue I see is that as part of the “Rams Plan” the Niners seem keen to replicate, there is a stated understanding of the quantity of picks aiding the team’s quality of picks.
In other words, the Niners understand that it’s all a lottery, so they are keen to hold as many tickets as possible. For every Trey Lance, there is a Brock Purdy, right?
Perhaps a more contemporary comparison would be to say the 49ers are buying an ETF in this draft class to diversify their player portfolio. But as the last few days on Wall Street have taught us, broad exposure isn’t always a sound position.
And yet here are the Niners — needing starter-caliber players at three defensive line spots, linebacker, cornerback, safety, guard, and wide receiver out of this draft. They’re all-in on a draft class that I think is the worst since 2015, making the margin for error far too small for comfort.
That diminishes the possibility of hitting on more than 50 percent of your picks — the barometer for success that the Niners must meet in 2025.
And for that to be the case going into a draft that the 49ers absolutely must nail is one risky proposition, indeed.