{"id":850601,"date":"2026-04-03T03:37:16","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T03:37:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/850601\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T03:37:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T03:37:16","slug":"new-list-praises-49ers-for-drafting-talent-where-most-other-teams-failed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/850601\/","title":{"rendered":"New list praises 49ers for drafting talent where most other teams failed"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the most part, the San Francisco 49ers may want to ignore their efforts<\/a> from the NFL Draft classes of 2022 and 2023, ones heavily impacted by the 2021 trade-up for quarterback Trey Lance.<\/p>\n

In 2022, though, the Niners used the final pick of the draft on a little-discussed quarterback, Brock Purdy, who quickly went from Mr. Irrelevant to one of the league’s best-paid stars in a brief amount of time. <\/p>\n

It was just one more example of how San Francisco manages to identify and properly develop talent late in the draft.<\/p>\n

Sports Illustrated’s Justin Melo recently compiled a list of teams that have a track record of drafting well in the late rounds<\/a>, and 49ers fans understand too well why their team falls into this category.<\/p>\n

So, understandably, Melo listed the Niners as one of the five best at doing this:<\/p>\n

There’s no better late-round NFL Draft success story in recent memory than San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy. The infamous Mr. Irrelevant pick (No. 262) in 2022, Purdy has since played in a Super Bowl and signed a $265 million extension. It doesn’t get better than that.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere, 2024 third-round pick Dominick Puni has developed into a high-level starter at guard. This past season, the 49ers’ six most-snapped defenders were all in-house draft picks, including Deommodore Lenoir (2021 5th-round), Dee Winters (2023 6th-round), Malik Mustapha (2024 4th-round), and Upton Stout (2025 3rd-round). And how about this run of late- round picks? George Kittle (2017), Dre Greenlaw (2019), Jauan Jennings (2020), Talanoa Hufanga (2021).<\/p>\n

Kittle arguably started the trend back when general manager John Lynch and head coach Kyle Shanahan took over their respective duties in the Bay Area in 2017. From a little-known fringe prospect to one of the NFL’s best tight ends in history, Kittle’s own success is worth heralding. <\/p>\n

Interestingly enough, though, San Francisco currently owns zero picks in the 2026 draft after Round 4<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Maybe Lynch and Co. opt to trade down from the fourth round at some point to stockpile some fifth-, sixth- or seventh-round selections, based solely on their track record for finding talent at otherwise unimpressive rounds in the draft.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the most part, the San Francisco 49ers may want to ignore their efforts from the NFL Draft…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":850602,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2080],"tags":[220,7,6,1161,252,2624,2623],"class_list":{"0":"post-850601","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco-49ers","8":"tag-49ers","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-nfl","11":"tag-san-francisco","12":"tag-san-francisco-49ers","13":"tag-sanfrancisco","14":"tag-sanfrancisco49ers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116338690949174486","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=850601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850601\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/850602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=850601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=850601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=850601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}