This must be the highest average draft pick in the league by a mile:
Nick Bosa: 2nd Overall Chase Young: 2nd Overall Collin Ferrell: 4th Overall Javon Kinlaw: 11th Overall Arik Armstead: 17th Overall Randy Gregory: 60th Overall Drake Jackson: 61st Overall
Nobody wants to talk about this, but are we bad at drafting D-linemen?
We’ve drafted 4 D-linemen in the top 2 rounds. Solomon Thomas, Nick Bosa, Javon Kinlaw, Drake Jackson.
Nick Bosa is elite but he was a layup evaluation coming out of college. Credit to Lynch for not screwing the pick up, but that pick was a layup at #2 overall.
Solomon Thomas was a massive bust. Just an all around terrible pick at #3 overall.
Javon Kinlaw has also been a massive bust. 1.5 sacks over the course of 4 years is garbage value at #14 overall.
It’s too soon to judge Drake Jackson but he’s been invisible since his big week 1 game and Randy Gregory and Chase Young pushed him back on the depth chart. Still time for him to turn it around but it’s trending in the wrong direction.
So we’ve completely whiffed on 2 of our 3 early D-line picks that weren’t complete layups and the 3rd one is trending in the wrong direction.
Fans don’t like comments that criticize our front office so I expect downvotes, but you have to wonder why they continue to pour draft capital into the D-line when the ROI has been terrible.
You’re for sure right. This is why even though they’ve invested so much through the draft (or tried to) on defensive linemen, they have had to go the FA/trades route to shore the misses. Signing Hargrave to a big contract, trading for Young and Gregory.
didn’t Shanahan and Lynch said it was their philosophy when going into the job that they were building with the Dline as the main focus. Can’t really fault them for doing what they sought out to do. Wish the scouting is better, but the draft is a crapshoot.
I don’t know how I remember this but I made a comment 2 years ago addressing this:
https://reddit.com/r/49ers/comments/qf8w7m/delucchi_the_49ers_added_4_players_in_the_first/hhy98rb/