The 49ers have the difficult task this year of navigating an NFL draft without a first-round pick. They traded their 2022 first-round selection in the deal that moved them up to No. 3 in last year’s draft. While not having a pick on Day 1 is typically daunting, NFL Media draft analyst Daniel Jeremiah had some good news for teams in that predicament this year.
Jeremiah on Friday in a conference call laid out why he thinks teams without a selection on the first day of the draft aren’t in a bad spot.
“I think this is a really good depth draft, especially when you get into the second, third, fourth round,” Jeremiah said. “There’s a lot of quality there, a lot of starters.”
Relying on talent later in drafts is part of the philosophy the Los Angeles Rams rode to a championship this year. They moved high picks to secure top-end talent, then built out the rest of their roster via good drafting on Days 2 and 3.
The 49ers will have to operate a similar way over the next couple years, and Jeremiah thinks that’ll become more prevalent in the coming drafts.
“I think that’s going to catch on around the league, too, is people are going to realize when you target the right positions outside of round 1, you can survive without a first-round pick,” Jeremiah said.
San Francisco has actually done a nice job identifying talent outside of Round 1. Deebo Samuel, George Kittle and Fred Warner were all taken after the first round. So were players like DJ Jones, Dre Greenlaw and Elijah Mitchell.
This really isn’t a new thing for the 49ers who’ve built a nice roster with some later picks and undrafted players. Now they’ll just have to do it without a crack at a top-32 talent. They have plenty of holes to fill so taking more swings in the middle rounds may wind up bearing fruit for them the way it did for the Rams.