Kyle Shanahan Responds To Critics Of the 49ers Draft Class

Kyle Shanahan walked The Rich Eisen Show through the math behind the most second-guessed picks in the San Francisco 49ers' draft class.

The 49ers head coach started with the wide receiver. He and general manager John Lynch traded out of the first round twice on Friday night and still landed DeShaun Stribling out of Ole Miss. Rich asked what Shanahan saw on the sizzle that made Stribling the guy in a deep receiver class.

Shanahan said the staff was not married to taking a wideout. There were several positions San Francisco wanted to address at 27. The first goal was that the player they actually wanted would slip to them at 27. The second goal was to trade back twice and accumulate picks while still landing the same player. Mission accomplished.

"We would have taken Stribling at 30 if we had to pick," Shanahan said.

Rich gave him space to handle the second-guessers directly. The host called it the bang bang Niner gang, full of fans playing makeshift Daniel Jeremiah and Mel Kiper Jr. The pick that lit them up most was K'Von Black, the first player drafted who did not get a combine invite. Shanahan took him in the third.

The coach was unflinching. The 49ers had Black as the second rated back on their board. Their evaluation. Right or wrong.

From there, Shanahan walked through the awkward economics of draft positioning. When a player skips the combine, the league quietly assumes a sixth round grade. So the team that actually likes him as a third round player has to decide whether to wait and try to steal him as a sleeper or pull the trigger early. Wait too long and another team that did its homework jumps the line.

"Man, if we want him, I'll take him at 90 in the third," Shanahan said. "It's, we'll be all right, everyone hating on us and judging that, like, as long as that's what we feel like."

The Stribling pick followed the same logic. Stribling was advertised as a late second round receiver. The more the 49ers watched, the more they liked him. Shanahan said the staff genuinely had Stribling rated higher than several wideouts who would come off the board at the back of the first.

That pushed the question to a different gamble. Do they trade back to 39 or 40 and try to get him there? The math said there was at least a 50 percent chance Stribling went before 40. Shanahan said the staff had been through the dance enough times to know how it ends. You wait twelve picks to look smart, the player goes two picks before you, and you are stuck explaining why you got cute.

So they took him at 33.

"Have everyone hate us, but get a few texts from people around the league being like, man, I can't believe you took that guy. I thought he was going to be there," Shanahan said.

The message to the Niner fanbase was cleanly delivered. The 49ers do not draft to the consensus board. They draft to their board. The grades are theirs. The calls are theirs. The texts from rival front offices are the only outside scoreboard they pay attention to.