The San Francisco 49ers had a reunion of sorts with Trey Lance on Thursday, beating the L.A. Chargers 41-17 with the former number three pick playing half of the game against his old team. Lance is still the big, athletic, strong-armed quarterback that he was in 2021 when the 49ers traded three first-round picks to move up for him, but coach Jim Harbaugh’s comments that he had not separated himself from D.J. Uiagalelei yet for the backup role emphasize how risky of a pick he was for San Francisco five years ago.
Lance was the O.G. “we’ll coach him up later” quarterback picks of the 2020s (Anthony Richardson, J.J. McCarthy, and now Ty Simpson), but has not noticeably improved after six offseasons despite being around some of the best offensive minds in the league.
To put a Seahawks spin on this story:
This is why you draft Jalen Milroe…IN THE THIRD ROUND. When the risk is very minimal and the reward is just as good.
One of the comments I saw online after the game was a widely-held belief that:
“Isn't it crazy the 9ers traded 3 firsts for this guy and basically suffered 0 short-term consequences as a result”
Suffered “zero” consequences?
This is the type of mentality that Seahawks fans love to hear about the 49ers. That the goal isn’t necessarily to win the Super Bowl, but to not look foolish for trading first-round picks in 2022 and 2023 to move up for a quarterback in 2021 who had only played one season above high school and that was at FCS North Dakota State against teams that had almost no future NFL players.
The 49ers are almost out of players who were alive when they last won the Super Bowl in 1994. Meanwhile, if a woman got pregnant on the day the Seahawks last won a Super Bowl, she’d most likely still be carrying that child today.
While it is true that the 49ers went to the NFC Championship game in 2021, 2022, and 2023, they also lost two of those games and then lost the Super Bowl to the Chiefs to cap off that run.
If the 49ers had had a slightly better team—say by drafting Micah Parsons—they might have had at least two Super Bowl titles.
And over the past two seasons, the Niners went 6-11 in 2024 even though they were relatively healthy; and then went 12-5 (even though they were relatively unhealthy) but got their asses kicked in the wild card by a Seahawks team that was adding first and second-round picks during the same years that San Francisco had given theirs away.
So to say that the San Francisco 49ers “suffered zero consequences” as a result of the monumentally dumb decision to trade up for Lance is beyond just being wrong. It’s offensive to common sense.
What could the 49ers have done differently?
2021 draft
49ers: Traded up for Trey Lance
Seahawks: Owed for Jamal Adams trade
Rams: Traded for Matthew Stafford
Cardinals: Drafted Zaven Collins
Because I guess I’ll include the Cardinals anyway.
The 49ers were actually bidding for Stafford, but probably stood little chance of winning because Detroit’s new general manager Brad Holmes had spent his entire career in the Rams organization. When L.A. could offer Jared Goff in addition to two first-round picks, it made it easier for Holmes to justify sending Stafford to his old boss Les Snead.
I have to wonder if this is what caused John Lynch to become so loosey-goosey with San Francisco’s future picks. He had been dangling them to the Lions for Stafford and now that he lost that battle, he felt like he was still involved in a war with nowhere to unload his ammunition.
It’s sort of like if you prepare yourself mentally to spend a lot of money, like lets say you took your car to the shop expecting the bill to be $5,000 but it turned out to be only $2,500. Now you’re like “Damn, I have $2,500 left to spend!” even though that’s just money you had already.
It’s just money you were prepared to spend, but somehow now you’re at a restaurant and ordering every app on the menu.
Long before draft day, Lynch traded picks 12 and 102 that year, plus first-round picks in 2022 and 2023 to the Dolphins for pick 3. The 49ers didn’t know which quarterback they were going to draft yet (Lance, Mac Jones, and Justin Fields were the considerations), which in itself should have been enough of a red flag to NOT make the trade.
And it wasn’t as though San Francisco was preparing to start Jacoby Brissett or Nick Mullens. Although they did need an off ramp from Jimmy Garoppolo, the quarterback was only 30 at the time and played virtually all of the 2021 season anyway.
Had the 49ers waited until draft day (when they had pick 12):
They could have still traded up for a quarterback
Jones made it all the way to pick 15
Fields made it to pick 11
Parsons was pick 12
Rashawn Slater was pick 13
A slight reimagining of the 2021 49ers shows a team that would have been exactly the same (because Lance didn’t play) but has Parsons opposite of Nick Bosa instead of Arden Key and Samson Ebukam. Or another way to look at it is that the 49ers used their second-round pick on guard Aaron Banks (who made zero starts in 2021), so they could have had Slater or Alijah Vera-Tucker starting for them instead of Laken Tomlinson.
The 49ers lost to the Rams in the NFC Championship by a 20-17 score. Doesn’t a pick of any value in the first-round potentially get them over the hump? Whereas Parsons or Slater could have sparked a dynasty run.
2022 draft
49ers: Owed for Trey Lance trade
Seahawks: Drafted Charles Cross (Russell Wilson trade)
Rams: Owed for Stafford trade
Cardinals: Traded for Hollywood Brown (????)
The tide flipped in 2022 when the Seahawks made an even bolder move than trading for Stafford, which is that they traded away their veteran star quarterback.
I don’t need to recount the trade haul for you again, but four premium picks in two years was enough put Seattle back on the Super Bowl path.
The Rams were terrible. Of course the Cardinals were terrible (but they used their second-round pick on Trey McBride). The Seahawks made the playoffs with Geno Smith, but honestly weren’t that good.
This was so obviously San Francisco’s opportunity to start owning the NFC West. That’s not quite what happened.
Were it not for the last pick, the 49ers had an abysmally stupid draft:
With this many bad picks, who knows if Lynch wouldn’t have also wasted a first-rounder. But what if they had gotten lucky and picked someone like George Pickens, a receiver who may have helped them avoid their problems at the position since then? This was before the Christian McCaffrey trade, so what if they had wanted Kenneth Walker III?
No less than the last Super Bowl would have gone very differently.
2023 draft
49ers: Owed for Trey Lance trade
Seahawks: Drafted Devon Witherspoon (Russ trade), Jaxon Smith-Njigba
Rams: Owed for Stafford trade
Cardinals: Drafted OT Paris Johnson (after trades)
I’ve only been focusing on and comparing first-round picks because that’s what the 49ers traded, but in this time we do see some stars enter the NFC West like Purdy, Walker, McBride, and Puka Nacua, etc.
But no team looks better than Seattle here, drafting two players who they’ve just extended for a combined $300 million. In addition to Derick Hall, Zach Charbonnet, Anthony Bradford, and Mike Morris.
Trading for Stafford turned out to be more of a long-term move than most expected, as the Rams are still considered Super Bowl favorites five years later, but the real dynasty-building play was acquiring picks that could be used to build a defense and a supporting cast for the quarterback instead of becoming fixated on the quarterback himself.
In 2023, the 49ers had another terrible draft class, this time without a second-rounder either because of the McCaffrey trade. San Francisco reached the Super Bowl and lost in overtime, but surely they suffered “no short-term consequences”…
Like, I don’t know, coming up short three years in a row?
I’m sure it doesn’t matter that they didn’t have a good pass rusher opposite of Bosa, a better offensive line, or a receiver who could stretch the field. Never mind that over the past two seasons, the 49ers have had one of the worst defenses in the entire NFL. If “overcoming” this problem means losing 41-6 to the Seahawks, by all means I agree that trading for Trey Lance was still a good decision and carried no consequences.
Les Snead is an absolute magician who somehow regularly gives away his first round (but tends to get back good players) and adds to it by 3rd round+ finds like Kupp, Young, Puka, etc. No other GM seems to be able to be successful at this approach, and in fact as this article does a great job of pointing out, it's the opposite.
Luckily, we have JS, and starting with the Russ trade, he has been on a big time roll... crushed the 22 and 23 drafts. Decent 24 draft. 25 looks like it could be very good. And nailed the acquisitions... Lenny, Demarcus, Sam, Coop, Shaheed. He's been on fire. Had any of those things not gone as well, no SB. It takes a lot of great moves, stacked, as MM might say.
Giving away first round picks to get nothing back isn't going to get it done... I think back to Pete's last year when the Niners beat us badly and Pete lamented that they just had more talent... it was obvious, not an excuse... and he was clearly looking forward to a future of using the RW trade assets to even the score. SF took that imbalance to heart apparently and wanted to pass us quickly on their way down.
All I ask in all of this is that they get it together on Sept 10th and win their first game of the season. They can lose every game after that for all I care but I'd like to see them start the season with a win.