[msqueri]

Regarding whether the Niners' brain trust should receive the benefit of the doubt regarding their draft judgment, I'll take your Warner, Mitchell, Greenlaw, and Jennings and raise you the much more comprehensive empirical analysis ESPN did a few weeks ago looking at NFL draft value between 2012-2021. That looked systematically at Career Approximated Value over what would be expected from a player at each draft slot.

That analysis found that the Niners rank #30 in the NFL in drafting over the last decade. That harsh judgment underrates the current brain trust because it is heavily influenced by outright disastrous 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2016 drafts (Trent Baalke truly does worse than a dart throwing monkey, and he did it again with his idiotic Travon Walker pick this year). In the drafts Lynch and Shanahan are responsible for, 2017 was the 12th best draft, 2018 was the 8th best, 2019 was the 3rd best, 2020 was the 19th best, and 2021 was the 20th best. There is of course time for any of these ranks to get better or worse depending on if future performance deviates from what's happened to date (this truly could happen in both directions, for instance getting value from Lance but not from Samuel or any number of other ways performance could differ from what's happened to date).

Looking at this, the first Lynch/Shanahan drafts were better than I gave them credit for but we now are several years removed from the last good one. For the 2021, 2022, and 2023 drafts it really boils down to the audacious bet on Lance. Personally I don't look at all of this and think these guys are deserving of blind trust. If you look at their first round picks, their first couple were very disappointing (Solomon Thomas, Reuben Foster) and since then they've all been acceptable in relation to draft slot without any home runs vis-a-vis what would be expected from that slot (Mike McGlinchey, Nick Bosa, Brandon Aiyuk). None of this tells us much about their QB evaluation in particular. In Lance We Trust!

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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.

Jimmy G was a middle-of-the-pack quarterback who thrived by being in Shanahan's scheme.  it almost won the Super Bowl.  Except now, Jimmy G. is a middle-of-the-pack quarterback coming off of a throwing shoulder injury that required surgical repair.  Torn labrum, split capsule, rotator cuff injury (likely).  When my son had a similar injury, the doc said you have a 90% chance of coming back at 90%.  That puts Jimmy G. into bottom-third territory.  I realize that Shanahan and Lynch are trying for some sleight-of-hand to make it appear that Garoppolo (who has GREAT W/L stats) is an amazing QB, but he really isn't.  He has Samuel, Kittle, Aiyuk, Mitchell, the best LT in football and (until this year) a very, very good line.



BTW, Garoppolo's rating was 98.74, just above his career 97.2 rating.  And not that it matters terribly, but Lance's rating was 97.33...he had one bad game against the Cardinals (rating 58.41), then 117.3 against the Seahawks, 127.08 against the Lions and 116.03 against the Texans.



All rookie QB ratings:

- Lance, 97.33

- Jones, 92.5

- Mills, 88.8

- Fields, 73.2

- Lawrence, 71.9

- Mond, 70.1

- Wilson, Zach, 69.7

- Trask, no rating



I dispute that Lance has to be a Hall of Famer for this to be a good trade.  They weren't going to find a QB in 2022, 2021 was the rich year.  And Lynch and Shanahan aren't getting any younger, they have a good team and good coaches...they really needed a quarterback.  Mac Jones would probably get them in the playoffs most years, losing in the wild card or first round -- just like Russell Wilson has every year since 2014.



Lance is the only one with Hall of Fame potential, he was the top rated QB this year despite being backup for virtually all of it.  Great trade, IMHO.

I think you're cherry picking stats and doing a similar sleight of hand you said the brain trust were doing with Jimmy G to give Lance credit for his supporting cast. The QB rating stat you cited is misleading, especially in such a small sample. If one were to want to evaluate the small sample, Total QBR is a far better stat. Here are how the rookies (plus Jimmy G in parentheses for visualization) ranked in Total QBR:

(Jimmy G - 53.3)
Mac Jones - 50.9
Davis Mills - 35.5
Trevor Lawrence - 33.5
Zach Wilson - 28.2
Justin Fields - 26.4

Lance did not rank because he did not play enough. However, his Total QBR was 33.4, in the bottom half of the rookie quarterbacks ordinally but in the ballpark as Mills and Lawrence.

I don't put Lance's chances of being a Hall of Famer all that much higher, if at all, from Fields and Jones. I certainly don't think they're that much higher plus giving up scads of top picks for several years. It is definitely incorrect to say Lance is the only one with Hall of Fame potential. Nobody in the NFL, much less you or me, can tell before a draft which QBs do or don't have Hall of Fame potential. Among the last 15 Hall of Fame QBs, ten were picked with the 11th overall pick or later. Statistically for QBs there isn't a difference between the #3 pick's likelihood of becoming a Hall of Famer and the #12 pick's likelihood.

I don't disagree that it made sense to go and get a QB, but prudent would have been to have Mac Jones back up Jimmy G and see what you have. If after a few years it's not working out you can look to the 2023/2024/2025 draft for a QB. I know everybody wants to find the franchise guy, but just willing it to be is not prudent. Once you're talking about non-number one overall picks, it's a spin of the roulette wheel to get that franchise guy. There is nothing Lynch and Shanahan could have possibly seen in Lance to make it likely he would be the franchise guy. It was a bet, plain and simple. And they bet a lot.

[msqueri]

Regarding whether the Niners' brain trust should receive the benefit of the doubt regarding their draft judgment, I'll take your Warner, Mitchell, Greenlaw, and Jennings and raise you the much more comprehensive empirical analysis ESPN did a few weeks ago looking at NFL draft value between 2012-2021. That looked systematically at Career Approximated Value over what would be expected from a player at each draft slot.

That analysis found that the Niners rank #30 in the NFL in drafting over the last decade. That harsh judgment underrates the current brain trust because it is heavily influenced by outright disastrous 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2016 drafts (Trent Baalke truly does worse than a dart throwing monkey, and he did it again with his idiotic Travon Walker pick this year). In the drafts Lynch and Shanahan are responsible for, 2017 was the 12th best draft, 2018 was the 8th best, 2019 was the 3rd best, 2020 was the 19th best, and 2021 was the 20th best. There is of course time for any of these ranks to get better or worse depending on if future performance deviates from what's happened to date (this truly could happen in both directions, for instance getting value from Lance but not from Samuel or any number of other ways performance could differ from what's happened to date).

Looking at this, the first Lynch/Shanahan drafts were better than I gave them credit for but we now are several years removed from the last good one. For the 2021, 2022, and 2023 drafts it really boils down to the audacious bet on Lance. Personally I don't look at all of this and think these guys are deserving of blind trust. If you look at their first round picks, their first couple were very disappointing (Solomon Thomas, Reuben Foster) and since then they've all been acceptable in relation to draft slot without any home runs vis-a-vis what would be expected from that slot (Mike McGlinchey, Nick Bosa, Brandon Aiyuk). None of this tells us much about their QB evaluation in particular. In Lance We Trust!

---

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.

Jimmy G was a middle-of-the-pack quarterback who thrived by being in Shanahan's scheme.  it almost won the Super Bowl.  Except now, Jimmy G. is a middle-of-the-pack quarterback coming off of a throwing shoulder injury that required surgical repair.  Torn labrum, split capsule, rotator cuff injury (likely).  When my son had a similar injury, the doc said you have a 90% chance of coming back at 90%.  That puts Jimmy G. into bottom-third territory.  I realize that Shanahan and Lynch are trying for some sleight-of-hand to make it appear that Garoppolo (who has GREAT W/L stats) is an amazing QB, but he really isn't.  He has Samuel, Kittle, Aiyuk, Mitchell, the best LT in football and (until this year) a very, very good line.



BTW, Garoppolo's rating was 98.74, just above his career 97.2 rating.  And not that it matters terribly, but Lance's rating was 97.33...he had one bad game against the Cardinals (rating 58.41), then 117.3 against the Seahawks, 127.08 against the Lions and 116.03 against the Texans.



All rookie QB ratings:

- Lance, 97.33

- Jones, 92.5

- Mills, 88.8

- Fields, 73.2

- Lawrence, 71.9

- Mond, 70.1

- Wilson, Zach, 69.7

- Trask, no rating



I dispute that Lance has to be a Hall of Famer for this to be a good trade.  They weren't going to find a QB in 2022, 2021 was the rich year.  And Lynch and Shanahan aren't getting any younger, they have a good team and good coaches...they really needed a quarterback.  Mac Jones would probably get them in the playoffs most years, losing in the wild card or first round -- just like Russell Wilson has every year since 2014.



Lance is the only one with Hall of Fame potential, he was the top rated QB this year despite being backup for virtually all of it.  Great trade, IMHO.

I think you're cherry picking stats and doing a similar sleight of hand you said the brain trust were doing with Jimmy G to give Lance credit for his supporting cast. The QB rating stat you cited is misleading, especially in such a small sample. If one were to want to evaluate the small sample, Total QBR is a far better stat. Here are how the rookies (plus Jimmy G in parentheses for visualization) ranked in Total QBR:

(Jimmy G - 53.3)
Mac Jones - 50.9
Davis Mills - 35.5
Trevor Lawrence - 33.5
Zach Wilson - 28.2
Justin Fields - 26.4

Lance did not rank because he did not play enough. However, his Total QBR was 33.4, in the bottom half of the rookie quarterbacks ordinally but in the ballpark as Mills and Lawrence.

I don't put Lance's chances of being a Hall of Famer all that much higher, if at all, from Fields and Jones. I certainly don't think they're that much higher plus giving up scads of top picks for several years. It is definitely incorrect to say Lance is the only one with Hall of Fame potential. Nobody in the NFL, much less you or me, can tell before a draft which QBs do or don't have Hall of Fame potential. Among the last 15 Hall of Fame QBs, ten were picked with the 11th overall pick or later. Statistically for QBs there isn't a difference between the #3 pick's likelihood of becoming a Hall of Famer and the #12 pick's likelihood.

I don't disagree that it made sense to go and get a QB, but prudent would have been to have Mac Jones back up Jimmy G and see what you have. If after a few years it's not working out you can look to the 2023/2024/2025 draft for a QB. I know everybody wants to find the franchise guy, but just willing it to be is not prudent. Once you're talking about non-number one overall picks, it's a spin of the roulette wheel to get that franchise guy. There is nothing Lynch and Shanahan could have possibly seen in Lance to make it likely he would be the franchise guy. It was a bet, plain and simple. And they bet a lot.