San Francisco 49ers plan has turned into mess before NFL Draft

The San Francisco 49ers may end up with a great quarterback from the 2021 NFL Draft, but the process getting there has gotten ugly.

Result over process? Certainly when it comes to getting a quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers.

Ultimately, nobody will look back and remember the circus preceding the 2021 NFL Draft for the 49ers. They won’t care about whether general manager John Lynch or head coach Kyle Shanahan made the final decision.

Fans — and those deciding whether Lynch and Shanahan will keep their jobs — will only care whether the duo got the call right.

This is good, considering the process to select Jimmy Garoppolo’s replacement has been a bungled mess.

In March, the Niners made the huge move of sending three first-round picks and a third-round choice to the Miami Dolphins for the right to move up nine spots from No. 12 to 3 overall. This sort of decision typically doesn’t happen without everyone who matters in the organization being in lockstep on who the pick will be.

However, that hasn’t been the case, as outlined by Shanahan at a presser on Monday, per NFL.com:

“We think there’s five guys and if one came to us at 12, I think that could’ve looked really good and you don’t have to worry about that stuff and everyone thinks you did it right. But we made a decision in this process that we felt that we needed a good starting quarterback this year and add that to our team. When we sat there at 12, way back in the day, we wanted to dictate it. We also were worried maybe the one we ended up wanting doesn’t fall to 12. Why don’t we move up there to the spot where we could take the best look at everyone? We know we’ll get one. … We feel we’re gonna get the one that’s best for us.”

For the Niners, it is either going to be Mac Jones (Alabama), Trey Lance (North Dakota State) or Justin Fields (Ohio State), with a litany of reports saying it’ll be one of the former two. Regardless of who the choice is, Shanahan and Lynch need to be correct.

If they are, all is forgiven and forgotten in the lead-up to the draft. If not, they may well pay with their jobs, perhaps forever wondering where it all went wrong.