Your daily San Francisco 49ers news for Thursday, May 9th, 2024
“Early draft picks will just be hoping to get through the sessions and prove to be competent at football. It’s likely the easiest thing they’ll do in an NFL uniform.
For the later draft picks and undrafted players it’s an opportunity to shine. Nobody is going to win a starting job or a roster spot. However, making an impression as a late-round pick, UDFA or minicamp invitee could set the table to show out in OTAs and beyond. Simply getting on the radar is a win for those players in the rookie minicamp.”
“No, I don’t think the 49ers have done enough over the last few years to give themselves good options on the right side of the offensive line. I still can’t believe they didn’t draft a tackle with one of their three third-round picks last year. But this administration is full of particularly tough graders on offensive linemen; if they don’t like a prospect, they don’t want any part of him. They won’t draft a development guy just for his raw tools.
The Shanahan system asks for very specific things in an OT — fluidity, speed in short bursts, quick thinking — and if the 49ers don’t see it, they don’t draft the OT. Which means they end up not selecting many OTs. Or actually any over the last three drafts. The last pure OT they drafted was Jaylon Moore as a fifth-rounder in 2021.
I understand the pickiness. I also think the 49ers could stand to be a little less finicky, especially as they contemplate the post-Trent Williams era. Because the only thing worse than stocking your roster with mediocre OTs is to run out of them completely.”
49ers great John Taylor reveals advice he gave Brandon Aiyuk before star turn (paywall)
“I introduced myself to him and I told him, ‘Brandon, listen: I watched your whole career at (Arizona State). You are a helluva receiver, man,” Taylor said Monday night after he was inducted into the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame. “‘This is just my advice to you. You can take it or leave it, but this is my advice to you: Stop overthinking. Just go play. Let your ability take over’….“(Aiyuk is) just thinking too much,” Taylor said he told Lynch. “He’s just got to go play, let his ability take over. I know that feeling: In his mind, he’s wondering and he has to stop wondering.”
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