2025 draft class

[clyde21]

Neyor apparently looked like the best WR so far in mini camp, better than the two drafted WRs

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[clyde21]

also we signed UDFA LB Stone Blanton to 3 year deal

[clyde21]

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[clyde21]

lol Mykel looks fkn huge

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[Pattersonca65]

lol Mykel looks fkn huge

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No one knows if he will pan out but at least it sounds like he is a hard worker at camp and really looking to get better

[Jikkle]

Saw this some time ago, but wanted to post it here as it bears on the discussion of reaches we had earlier in this thread.

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Niners reaches under this FO. There have ben a lot of them, of course. But what stands out even more is the hit rate on them. We have been really bad when taking players who are perceived as significant reaches. I suppose it would be worth doing a comparison with players that weren't considered reaches, as the bust rate in the draft is high generally and most of these guys were taken in the third or later. Still, it certainly doesn't look like the team has cracked the code on draft inefficiencies and is exploiting it to clean up on undervalued assets.

To do a brief review of this list:

20 players in total, including four who were taken this year.

Of the 16 with an NFL track record, there are six players who have not contributed to any NFL team in a meaningful way and should be considered outright busts (TDP, Williams, Lance, Harris, Hurd [injury-related], and Latu). Obviously Lance hurts the most, though I also struggle to label him a reach given the position. He was almost certainly going top-10 regardless.

I would argue only one player has arguably outperformed his draft position with the Niners to date, and that's blocking TE Charlie Woerner. We've struggled to replace him, but it's hardly a coveted position.

There are four players who have contributed to the Niners or other teams, but at a level below their draft position (Wishnowsky, Banks, Moody, Pettis).

I put CJ Beathard in a class of his own. We traded up to get him and he wasn't good, but he was a QB who stuck in the league for seven year, granted Baalke was a big part of keeping him around.

Two players did nothing for the Niners but have outperformed their draft position on other teams (Womack and Skule, the latter due almost entirely to his late draft position).

That leaves two players who have a solid shot to at least justify their draft positions in Pearsall and Green, though both were relatively high picks, so the expectation is higher. That said, if they can pick up where they left off last year, those picks look good.

But that leaves us with three players who have or may return good value to the team out of sixteen reaches before this year. Not great. Not to mention that letting Womack walk to keep Ambry Thomas and Darrell Luter looks pretty darn questionable right now.

The bigger issue isn't that we reached but we just flat out whiffed on those players and reaching made it sting even more.

I don't completely discount value in the draft I just think it gets overblown because how we determine what is a reach based on people that put together mock drafts and not an actual tangible metric.

The 2024 draft class was considered terrible in value at the time but now it's arguably a top 10 draft class at this moment. So did we hit the picks but still got terrible value or did the mock draft world have different values that the teams didn't necessarily have?

At the very least I do think the past two seasons we've had more focused drafts and while we can debate if the guy was the right pick or if they were a reach at the very least they make sense.

Like I see why we drafted who we did unlike previous years where we're scratching our head with picks like Moody, Latu, Price, or Sermon who didn't make sense positionally and didn't make sense as players coming out of college.

[Jikkle]

But that leaves us with three players who have or may return good value to the team out of sixteen reaches before this year. Not great. Not to mention that letting Womack walk to keep Ambry Thomas and Darrell Luter looks pretty darn questionable right now.

I think what doomed Womack is that I remember in the preseason he was making some awful mental mistakes.

I still would've kept him but I'm guessing he didn't see the field and why they cut him is because they didn't trust him to execute mentally.

[Jikkle]

lol Mykel looks fkn huge

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No one knows if he will pan out but at least it sounds like he is a hard worker at camp and really looking to get better

On the plus side he's only 20 well basically 21 so he still has room to grow.

Hard to say since he didn't really do agility drills but he seems very similar to Aldon Smith in terms of his body. Not to say he'll be Aldon Smith but if he does become an Aldon Smith like player without the baggage that would make a pretty ridiculous duo with him and Bosa on the field at the same time.

[clyde21]

that's pretty optimistic lol...Aldon had crazy juice off the line, and had a 11.5 sack/19 TFL season in college, Mykel just couldn't close to those types of explosive pass rush numbers.

i think we'd be lucky if Mykel, at his prime, can get to 14 sacks like Aldon did his rookie year. not to say Mykel can't be a good overall DE.

[CrimsonCrew]

Neyor apparently looked like the best WR so far in mini camp, better than the two drafted WRs

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Posted this a week or two ago, but I watched some Shrine Bowl one-on-ones and Neyor looked really good. He was just destroying DBs. There's a reason he went undrafted despite his obvious physical abilities, and an unpadded practice is kind of the perfect venue for him as he struggles against press and physical coverage, but there's obviously upside there. He looked like an ascending player when he went to Texas, but got hurt. Very curious to see if we can get something out of him.

[CrimsonCrew]

Niners reaches under this FO. There have ben a lot of them, of course. But what stands out even more is the hit rate on them. We have been really bad when taking players who are perceived as significant reaches. I suppose it would be worth doing a comparison with players that weren't considered reaches, as the bust rate in the draft is high generally and most of these guys were taken in the third or later. Still, it certainly doesn't look like the team has cracked the code on draft inefficiencies and is exploiting it to clean up on undervalued assets.

To do a brief review of this list:

20 players in total, including four who were taken this year.

Of the 16 with an NFL track record, there are six players who have not contributed to any NFL team in a meaningful way and should be considered outright busts (TDP, Williams, Lance, Harris, Hurd [injury-related], and Latu). Obviously Lance hurts the most, though I also struggle to label him a reach given the position. He was almost certainly going top-10 regardless.

I would argue only one player has arguably outperformed his draft position with the Niners to date, and that's blocking TE Charlie Woerner. We've struggled to replace him, but it's hardly a coveted position.

There are four players who have contributed to the Niners or other teams, but at a level below their draft position (Wishnowsky, Banks, Moody, Pettis).

I put CJ Beathard in a class of his own. We traded up to get him and he wasn't good, but he was a QB who stuck in the league for seven year, granted Baalke was a big part of keeping him around.

Two players did nothing for the Niners but have outperformed their draft position on other teams (Womack and Skule, the latter due almost entirely to his late draft position).

That leaves two players who have a solid shot to at least justify their draft positions in Pearsall and Green, though both were relatively high picks, so the expectation is higher. That said, if they can pick up where they left off last year, those picks look good.

But that leaves us with three players who have or may return good value to the team out of sixteen reaches before this year. Not great. Not to mention that letting Womack walk to keep Ambry Thomas and Darrell Luter looks pretty darn questionable right now.

The bigger issue isn't that we reached but we just flat out whiffed on those players and reaching made it sting even more.

I don't completely discount value in the draft I just think it gets overblown because how we determine what is a reach based on people that put together mock drafts and not an actual tangible metric.

The 2024 draft class was considered terrible in value at the time but now it's arguably a top 10 draft class at this moment. So did we hit the picks but still got terrible value or did the mock draft world have different values that the teams didn't necessarily have?

At the very least I do think the past two seasons we've had more focused drafts and while we can debate if the guy was the right pick or if they were a reach at the very least they make sense.

Like I see why we drafted who we did unlike previous years where we're scratching our head with picks like Moody, Latu, Price, or Sermon who didn't make sense positionally and didn't make sense as players coming out of college.

Sure, that's always the tension between these "reaches" and what makes a good pick. A guy's value is ultimately the pick that the second most-interested team would use on him, and by definition we won't know what that is. A guy who is good value is not guaranteed to be successful, and plenty of reaches have been great players. Hell, we've had loads of UDFAs who have been contributing members of great football teams.

I didn't love the Pearsall pick last year, but that was more about the position than the player. Pearsall was pretty similar to McConkey physically, and (somewhat ironically at this point) didn't have the injury concerns. Green was a big reach against consensus, but again, I was fine with that pick.

Martin and Stout stand out because the they are tremendous physical outliers who almost certainly would have been available later in the draft. For context, in 2024, the first LB drafted who was under 230 pounds was Jordan Magee at pick 139. The first LB drafted who was under 6' was Darius Muasau at pick 183. The first CB drafted who weighed less than 185 was Kris Abrams-Draine at 145. I don't believe any drafted CB was shorter than 5' 9 1/2". Those numbers also have to be considered in the context that this draft was crazy deep.

Watkins was a weird pick largely because he played in something of a gimmicky offense that didn't require much of its receivers and he had this one huge outlier game that accounted for a ridiculous amount of his on-field production. I've just never heard a coach or GM answer a question about why they took a guy by referencing his gauntlet and route-running at the combine. Watkins has physical tools, and I sure hope they pay off, but that was a really weird pick and even weirder justification.

Anyway, these guys are on the team, and I sure hope they pan out. The issue for me is that every one of those three would be a pretty major outlier. And the reality is that outliers like those players ALWAYS fall. So take them, by all means, just don't do it in the third round of a historically deep draft.

[CrimsonCrew]

But that leaves us with three players who have or may return good value to the team out of sixteen reaches before this year. Not great. Not to mention that letting Womack walk to keep Ambry Thomas and Darrell Luter looks pretty darn questionable right now.

I think what doomed Womack is that I remember in the preseason he was making some awful mental mistakes.

I still would've kept him but I'm guessing he didn't see the field and why they cut him is because they didn't trust him to execute mentally.

Sure, but it's not like Darrell Luter is a brainiac. The dude very arguably cost us the SB by running into that punt, and he made a similar mistake again this year. And Womack was an awesome STs player. And to keep Ambry Thomas over him...ugh.

[CrimsonCrew]

that's pretty optimistic lol...Aldon had crazy juice off the line, and had a 11.5 sack/19 TFL season in college, Mykel just couldn't close to those types of explosive pass rush numbers.

i think we'd be lucky if Mykel, at his prime, can get to 14 sacks like Aldon did his rookie year. not to say Mykel can't be a good overall DE.

There's a lot of pass-rushing upside with Williams. He played in a defense that doesn't emphasize getting to he QB. He played injured. And he's still pretty unrefined in terms of pass-rush moves and plan. That said, I tend to agree that 14 sacks in his prime would be a great result. Aldon Smith was a different animal. And he played next to prime Justin Smith, who ate OL double-teams for breakfast.

[clyde21]

that's pretty optimistic lol...Aldon had crazy juice off the line, and had a 11.5 sack/19 TFL season in college, Mykel just couldn't close to those types of explosive pass rush numbers.

i think we'd be lucky if Mykel, at his prime, can get to 14 sacks like Aldon did his rookie year. not to say Mykel can't be a good overall DE.

There's a lot of pass-rushing upside with Williams. He played in a defense that doesn't emphasize getting to he QB. He played injured. And he's still pretty unrefined in terms of pass-rush moves and plan. That said, I tend to agree that 14 sacks in his prime would be a great result. Aldon Smith was a different animal. And he played next to prime Justin Smith, who ate OL double-teams for breakfast.

of course, obviously there is still a lot untapped there in the pass-rushing department, but Aldon Smith was just a different type of pass-rushing freakazoid. there is a reason he broke the sack record for a player in his first two seasons in the league (33 sacks)

i'd take Aldon's sack numbers as a ROOKIE in Mykel's prime as a win and run.

[vvoland]

But that leaves us with three players who have or may return good value to the team out of sixteen reaches before this year. Not great. Not to mention that letting Womack walk to keep Ambry Thomas and Darrell Luter looks pretty darn questionable right now.

I think what doomed Womack is that I remember in the preseason he was making some awful mental mistakes.

I still would've kept him but I'm guessing he didn't see the field and why they cut him is because they didn't trust him to execute mentally.

Sure, but it's not like Darrell Luter is a brainiac. The dude very arguably cost us the SB by running into that punt, and he made a similar mistake again this year. And Womack was an awesome STs player. And to keep Ambry Thomas over him...ugh.

The womack decision was idiotic even to my, very amateur, eye. To cut him just to keep Ambry OR Luter is ridiculous. To cut him to keep both? that's asinine

[CrimsonCrew]

that's pretty optimistic lol...Aldon had crazy juice off the line, and had a 11.5 sack/19 TFL season in college, Mykel just couldn't close to those types of explosive pass rush numbers.

i think we'd be lucky if Mykel, at his prime, can get to 14 sacks like Aldon did his rookie year. not to say Mykel can't be a good overall DE.

There's a lot of pass-rushing upside with Williams. He played in a defense that doesn't emphasize getting to he QB. He played injured. And he's still pretty unrefined in terms of pass-rush moves and plan. That said, I tend to agree that 14 sacks in his prime would be a great result. Aldon Smith was a different animal. And he played next to prime Justin Smith, who ate OL double-teams for breakfast.

of course, obviously there is still a lot untapped there in the pass-rushing department, but Aldon Smith was just a different type of pass-rushing freakazoid. there is a reason he broke the sack record for a player in his first two seasons in the league (33 sacks)

i'd take Aldon's sack numbers as a ROOKIE in Mykel's prime as a win and run.

Part of the tragedy of Aldon Smith is that he had the natural ability to maybe have been the best pass rusher in the history of the league. Dude was so talented.

[clyde21]

glimpse of what Mykel can do when lined up as a wide-9, which i'm assuming he'll see a ton of under Saleh. at Georgia I think he saw much more 4i looks which limited his sack output

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[Jikkle]

glimpse of what Mykel can do when lined up as a wide-9, which i'm assuming he'll see a ton of under Saleh. at Georgia I think he saw much more 4i looks which limited his sack output

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I've been bullish on his pass-rushing potential long term.

Probably will never develop into a guy that threatens to be leading the league in sacks but I think he can be a consistent 8+ sacks guy with some years dipping into the double digits.

Moreso with Bosa on the opposite side gaining a lot of attention and even moreso is guys like Collins and West can push the pocket. Heck Collins doesn't even have to push the pocket if he can master the Justin Smith skills of eating up two blockers so your end can stunt around for a clean shot at the QB.

[CrimsonCrew]

Back to the reaches issue briefly - I know, dead horse and all that, but I can't stop myself - part of what's tough with Martin and Stout is that they play undervalued positions. Off-ball LB and slot corner are two of the least prized positions in the NFL. You can find solid FAs on cheap deals at those spots every year. Players at those positions always seem to fall in the draft.

So not only did we add two major outliers in terms of size with premium picks in a deep draft, but we did it at positions where they need to be at least solid starters at the position to merit the draft picks we used on them. I'm really pulling for these two to get on the field and make an impact immediately. But the odds are against that given their sizes, and even if they become impact players at their position, their relative value still won't be all that high given their role.

[CrimsonCrew]

For context on the above, Kyler Gordon is apparently the highest-paid slot corner in the NFL. He just signed a three-year deal that pays him about $13 million a year. Derek Stingley just signed a three-year extension that pays him $30 million per season. The best off-ball LBs make $15-20 million, while impact OTs, DEs, and WRs make twice that.