{"id":874352,"date":"2026-04-25T14:51:22","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T14:51:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/874352\/"},"modified":"2026-04-25T14:51:22","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T14:51:22","slug":"49ers-john-lynch-talks-teams-conviction-amid-criticism-of-2026-nfl-draft-class","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/874352\/","title":{"rendered":"49ers’ John Lynch Talks Team’s ‘Conviction’ Amid Criticism of 2026 NFL Draft Class"},"content":{"rendered":"

The San Francisco 49ers have made three picks in this year’s draft so far: Ole Miss wide receiver De’Zhaun Stribling (No. 33 overall), Texas Tech edge-rusher Romello Height (No. 70) and Indiana running back Kaelon Black (No. 90).<\/p>\n

After the night’s proceedings, 49ers general manager John Lynch made his team’s “conviction” on the choices clear during a press conference.<\/p>\n

“That’s where we had them (on our draft board), and we had a lot of conviction,” he said, per Vic Tafur<\/a> of The Athletic.<\/p>\n

The 49ers are getting some criticism on reaching for picks.<\/p>\n

Obviously, the 49ers are going off their own draft board and not those of analysts. It’s certainly possible the picks they made pan out and any pre-draft criticism becomes a distant memory.<\/p>\n

There is a gap between where the 49ers chose those players and where analysts had them, however. <\/p>\n

Taking a look at the B\/R NFL Scouting Department big board<\/a>, for example, Stribling was listed at No. 68 overall. Height was 92nd, and Black was 210th.<\/p>\n

We’ll see how they fare soon enough in San Francisco. In the meantime, the 49ers’ draft class isn’t complete by any means. They still have a quartet of fourth-round picks (Nos. 107, 127, 133 and 139) and a fifth-rounder (No. 179) in 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The San Francisco 49ers have made three picks in this year’s draft so far: Ole Miss wide receiver…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":874353,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2080],"tags":[220,7,6,1161,252,2624,2623],"class_list":{"0":"post-874352","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\/116465911911801064","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874352","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=874352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874352\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/874353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=874352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=874352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=874352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}