With less than two weeks until the start of the NFL Draft, the anticipation is building to see which young athletes will be selected to join the San Francisco 49ers in 2025.
As it stands, the 49ers are tied with the Baltimore Ravens for most draft picks this year with each team scheduled to make 11 selections. San Francisco will kick off draft weekend with the 11th-overall pick on Day 1 and make an additional three selections in the top 100. For a full breakdown of all the red and gold's picks, click here.
With this type of draft capital, president of football operations/general manager John Lynch and company can address some of the immediate needs of the team and replenish the roster head coach Kyle Shanahan will take into training camp in late July.
"It's the responsibility of myself and our staff - and when I say our staff, it's my staff, Kyle's staff - we have 11 draft choices, and we have to make them count," Lynch said at the NFL Annual League Meeting. "I think more so than in recent past, there are slots we have to fill with those guys.
"It's daunting but also really invigorating and exciting. It's something we do well. I like our process. We've refined it over the years. This is always my favorite time of the year, other than playing the games. I love the draft because it's the best representation of our entire organization coming together for one purpose."
Since being hired to lead the organization in 2017, the Lynch-Shanahan regime has earned a reputation for striking gold in the middle to late rounds of the selection process. That's not to say they haven't found success in the early rounds as well - plenty of first- and second-round picks have become high-production players for the organization. That list of early round successes includes: offensive tackle Mike McGlinchey (2018, first round), defensive lineman Nick Bosa (2019, first round), wide receiver Deebo Samuel Sr. (2019, 2nd round), wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk (2020, first round), and offensive guard Aaron Banks (2021, second round), among others.
However, the team's ability to find draft gems has been crucial to their success over the course of the last several years. San Francisco went without first-round picks in 2022 and 2023 as the result of a trade and also earned the draft positioning that comes with reaching the NFC Championship or better in four of the last six seasons. None of those hindrances have prevented the 49ers from identifying talented players to reload their roster on Day 2 and 3 of multiple drafts.
The first draft gems of the Lynch-Shanahan era came in the fifth and sixth rounds of the 2017 NFL Draft when they selected All-Pro tight end George Kittle and defensive lineman D.J. Jones, who is now a six-year starter in the league. In 2018, the 49ers snagged All-Pro linebacker Fred Warner in the third round. The 49ers followed up in 2019 by picking up punter Mitch Wishnowsky in the fourth round and finding the tandem to Warner in fifth-rounder Dre Greenlaw. The 2020 draft brought starting right tackle Colton McKivitz into the fold via a fifth-round selection, and they rounded things out with wide receiver Jauan Jennings in the seventh round. The 2021 draft included fifth-rounders Deommodore Lenoir and safety Talanoa Hufanga and sixth-rounder Elijah Mitchell, who closed out his rookie year as the team's leading rusher.
Perhaps the headliner of this list of mid to late-round draft success stories is seventh-round selection Brock Purdy. The now-starting quarterback of the 49ers was the final pick, No. 262, of the 2022 NFL Draft. The following year, the 2023 NFL Draft produced third-rounder safety Ji'Ayir Brown, who stepped in for Hufanga after he tore his ACL. This most recent draft class included some big time contributors in the mid rounds, including offensive lineman Dominick Puni, safety Malik Mustapha, and running back Isaac Guerendo.
"When we got here, we really tried to build this through the Draft, and then we did most of our finances on re-signing our own players," Shanahan said at the NFL Annual League Meeting. "When you look at our breakout year in 2019, I think that was the second year of a third-round pick in Fred Warner, it was the third year of a fifth-round pick in George Kittle, it was the first year of a fifth-round pick in Dre Greenlaw, and the third year of a sixth-round pick in D.J. Jones.
"We had a lot of draft guys that we were able to work with and build to have a lot of success. To have success again with those players over the next five years means you retained most of them... you can't keep doing that forever. The cool thing is, we still have been able to retain some of those guys."
Veterans and starters remain mostly intact on the offensive side of the ball outside of the departure of Banks, running back Jordan Mason, and tight end Eric Saubert in free agency. The defense, however, did experience a fair amount of change at the start of the new league year. San Francisco has more vacant starting positions and a need for role players at each level of the defense. The good news is, Lynch, Shanahan, and company have 11 picks to work with at the end of the month. And, as history has shown, where a player is drafted does not dictate the positive impact they can have on the franchise.
"We've gone into drafts these last few years, not as much last year, but especially the two years prior, you look at our board, and we didn't really have to find a starter anywhere," Shanahan added. "You have to find depth because quickly there is a starter with an injury... It really isn't that way this year. We are going to go into this draft, and hopefully add 11 people. We'll see how that pans out, add them into our OTAs, and hopefully, we'll have some really good competition come training camp."
