The start of many NFL journeys will begin in less than a week’s time with the 2023 NFL Draft kicking off on Thursday, April 27. The three-day event is the next key date on the league’s offseason calendar, and for the San Francisco 49ers, it marks the next opportunity to add talent to the team’s roster for the upcoming 2023 season.
As it stands, the 49ers have a total of 11 picks in this year’s draft, beginning with three selections in the third round. Both general manager John Lynch and head coach Kyle Shanahan have reiterated the goal of this year’s draft throughout the offseason. Adding depth to roster is the name of the game for the 49ers with much of the team’s core remaining intact after the free agency frenzy. San Francisco’s brass, much like in 2022, will look to find gems in the later rounds to fill out the roster.
“The draft sets up well with the way we are positioned this year… To me, the blue chip players, there aren’t as many this year, but there is good depth,” Lynch said. “I think there is good value, and we seem to do well at pick 100 and back. We’re in our sweet spot. We’ve got to make them count.”
Ahead of Round 1 on Thursday, NFL media analyst Daniel Jeremiah previewed some of the trending topics surrounding this year’s draft.
Lynch and Shanahan’s success with late round draft picks has been well documented over their six-year career in The Bay. Several of the team’s key players – Fred Warner, George Kittle, Dre Greenlaw and Elijah Mitchell – just to name a few, were selected in the third round or later. The 49ers formula for finding draft gems continues to be a subject of interest for teams around the league. Here’s how Jeremiah summed up the 49ers draft strategy:
“I think they’ve figured out the makeup part of this whole thing. They have found it,” Jeremiah said during his NFL Network preview call. “Sometimes this thing is not evaluating these guys as players. It’s evaluating them as people and competitors and all that. I’ve got to believe it helps having John there as somebody who kind of epitomizes what you would want in a football player. He knows what it looks like. With him and Adam Peters, who I think is as good as anybody in the league at evaluating players, they’ve got a great personnel department. Kyle has a really good idea of what he wants at every position. So, when you get a coaching staff that gives you a good menu and you get guys that know how to go find it, you get a lot of success.”
Second-year pro Brock Purdy was also…
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