[DC 86]

Kyle Shanahan basically said the reason they moved up as high as they could was to have a choice so it couldn't be made for them, and they got one.

Kind of hard to argue with that. While one might not agree with the choice, it seems prudent to at least have a choice. If the niners stood pat, they risked little or no choice.

This is the point that I'm making. NFL front offices haven't demonstrated that having a choice is necessarily better than not having a choice, yet moving up in order to make a choice is costly. The last six times (prior to Lance's selection) that a team traded to move into the top five to draft a QB they ended up trading the QB relatively early.

Let's look at this example, which is the most recent case (excluding Lance): 2018. The Jets wanted to "have a choice" so they traded three second round picks (including two high seconds, #34 and #37) to move up from #6 to #3. They got their guy: Sam Darnold. If they stood pat at #6 (and presumably had "the choice made for them") they draft Josh Allen.

The second most recent case was in 2017. The Bears wanted to "have a choice" so they traded three picks in order to move up to #2 and make sure to get their guy: Mitchell Trubisky. If they has stood pat and "had the choice made for them" presumably they would have been stuck with the next QB that came off the board: Patrick Mahomes.

We could repeat this exercise for all the "move ups" that I documented in a previous post, but the point is that paying to have a choice is only justifiable if you demonstrate that your evaluation ability is substantially better than not having a choice and simply picking whoever falls to you. If you believe that SF has extraordinary QB/draft evaluation abilities then trading multiple first round picks to make sure you get Lance makes sense. Otherwise the logical approach is to draft whichever of the three QBs (Lance, Fields, Jones) falls to you and hope for the best, while using those very valuable non-traded assets to address other needs. History indicates that the latter approach yields better results.

[DC 86]

Kyle Shanahan basically said the reason they moved up as high as they could was to have a choice so it couldn't be made for them, and they got one.

Kind of hard to argue with that. While one might not agree with the choice, it seems prudent to at least have a choice. If the niners stood pat, they risked little or no choice.

This is the point that I'm making. NFL front offices haven't demonstrated that having a choice is necessarily better than not having a choice, yet moving up in order to make a choice is costly. The last six times (prior to Lance's selection) that a team traded to move into the top five to draft a QB they ended up trading the QB relatively early.

Let's look at this example, which is the most recent case (excluding Lance): 2018. The Jets wanted to "have a choice" so they traded three second round picks (including two high seconds, #34 and #37) to move up from #6 to #3. They got their guy: Sam Darnold. If they stood pat at #6 (and presumably had "the choice made for them") they draft Josh Allen.

The second most recent case was in 2017. The Bears wanted to "have a choice" so they traded three picks in order to move up to #2 and make sure to get their guy: Mitchell Trubisky. If they has stood pat and "had the choice made for them" presumably they would have been stuck with the next QB that came off the board: Patrick Mahomes.

We could repeat this exercise for all the "move ups" that I documented in a previous post, but the point is that paying to have a choice is only justifiable if you demonstrate that your evaluation ability is substantially better than not having a choice and simply picking whoever falls to you. If you believe that SF has extraordinary QB/draft evaluation abilities then trading multiple first round picks to make sure you get Lance makes sense. Otherwise the logical approach is to draft whichever of the three QBs (Lance, Fields, Jones) falls to you and hope for the best, while using those very valuable non-traded assets to address other needs. History indicates that the latter approach yields better results.