49ers shake up the NFL Draft after trading a haul for the No. 3 pick
By Josh Hill
The San Francisco 49ers just shook up the NFL Draft in a massive way trading up to the No. 3 overall spot.
We’re roughly a month away from the NFL Draft, but the San Francisco 49ers just shook the entire thing up with one phone call.
According to ESPN’s Adam Schefter, the Niners are trading an absolute haul of picks to the Miami Dolphins in exchange for the No. 3 pick in this year’s draft.
“Dolphins trading No. 3 overall pick to the San Francisco 49ers for the No. 12 pick, a 2021 third-round pick (SF’s comp pick for Robert Saleh hiring) and first-round picks in 2022 and 2023, per sources,” Schefter reported. “Blockbuster deal with massive ramifications for years to come.”
That last bit is the shockwave we won’t be able to realistically dissect for years, but it’s absolutely seismic.
There’s no real mystery here as to why the 49ers made this trade. By moving up to the Top-3, San Francisco has guaranteed itself one of the top quarterbacks in this year’s class.
Come the start of training camp, Zach Wilson or Justin Fields will be wearing maroon and gold in the Bay Area. The only way things could get more chaotic is if the Jaguars somehow fail to do the obvious and take Trevor Lawrence with the top pick.
There will be plenty of in-depth deep dives on what this move means, but the knee-jerk takeaway is that Kyle Shanahan finally has his man — or t least take two of finally having his man.
We thought his quarterback problems were solved when the Niners traded a second-round pick for Jimmy Garoppolo. The move ended up getting San Francisco to a Super Bowl in 2019 but it was quarterback play that did them in.
Trading the future for either Fields or Wilson is one of the most scathing indictments of Garoppolo that could possibly have surfaced. This wasn’t just the 49ers moving on from him, this was them mortgaging their future because they believed so little in him.
As for Shanahan, the pressure is on to pick a guy who will do all of the things we’ve fawned over imagining the likes of Deshaun Watson or even Sam Darnold doing in his offense. The idea is firmly in our heads, now it appears actual execution is the next step.