[msqueri]

It’s not just that he has to better than the alternatives; he has to be better than them by the value of the picks that SF gave up to move up in the draft to get him.  And therein lies the rub.



BC

Exactly. Given what we gave up I don't think it's an exaggeration to say he has to be a Hall of Famer for this to be a good trade. The team mortgaged the future in a year in which they already had a good (but arguably not good enough to be a Super Bowl favorite) QB1 under contract for the next two years and it was an extremely strong QB draft in which the original pick was widely seen as good enough to get Fields or Jones. Or they could have traded up a few spots and given up much less. They have bet not just on Trey Lance being a legend but Trey Lance being a legend in a way others in a deep QB draft wouldn't be.

It's a disastrous trade if, for instance, Trey Lance becomes as good as Jimmy G. That's a big problem because the #3 pick in the draft turning into Jimmy G actually wouldn't be such a bad result historically speaking. If you look at the history of QBs drafted in the 2-4 range since 1980 (Art Schlicter, Jim Everett, Rick Mirer, Heath Shuler, Steve McNair, Ryan Leaf, Donovan McNabb, Akili Smith, Joey Harrington, Philip Rivers, Vince Young, Matt Ryan, Robert Griffin III, Blake Bortles, Marcus Mariota, Carson Wentz, Mitchell Trubisky, and Sam Darnold), you start to feel a lot better about Jimmy G being backed up by Mac Jones for 1-2 years before turning over the job to Jones. The pick we traded the farm for has a historical record of giving you a 6 percent change of a Hall of Famer and maybe a 33 percent chance of a good QB.

Like true meatheads, Lynch and Shanahan thought they could do better with the pick than that sordid history. We'll see if they're right. But they're going to have to be spectacularly right to justify trading away what they did, with the solid QB baseline they were trying to improve upon, in a year with lots of attractive QB options.

[msqueri]

It’s not just that he has to better than the alternatives; he has to be better than them by the value of the picks that SF gave up to move up in the draft to get him.  And therein lies the rub.



BC

Exactly. Given what we gave up I don't think it's an exaggeration to say he has to be a Hall of Famer for this to be a good trade. The team mortgaged the future in a year in which they already had a good (but arguably not good enough to be a Super Bowl favorite) QB1 under contract for the next two years and it was an extremely strong QB draft in which the original pick was widely seen as good enough to get Fields or Jones. Or they could have traded up a few spots and given up much less. They have bet not just on Trey Lance being a legend but Trey Lance being a legend in a way others in a deep QB draft wouldn't be.

It's a disastrous trade if, for instance, Trey Lance becomes as good as Jimmy G. That's a big problem because the #3 pick in the draft turning into Jimmy G actually wouldn't be such a bad result historically speaking. If you look at the history of QBs drafted in the 2-4 range since 1980 (Art Schlicter, Jim Everett, Rick Mirer, Heath Shuler, Steve McNair, Ryan Leaf, Donovan McNabb, Akili Smith, Joey Harrington, Philip Rivers, Vince Young, Matt Ryan, Robert Griffin III, Blake Bortles, Marcus Mariota, Carson Wentz, Mitchell Trubisky, and Sam Darnold), you start to feel a lot better about Jimmy G being backed up by Mac Jones for 1-2 years before turning over the job to Jones. The pick we traded the farm for has a historical record of giving you a 6 percent change of a Hall of Famer and maybe a 33 percent chance of a good QB.

Like true meatheads, Lynch and Shanahan thought they could do better with the pick than that sordid history. We'll see if they're right. But they're going to have to be spectacularly right to justify trading away what they did, with the solid QB baseline they were trying to improve upon, in a year with lots of attractive QB options.