The Sacramento Bee's Matt Barrows had a couple tweets today regarding a possible trade scenario for the San Francisco 49ers come draft day. Now, I'm generally against elaborate trade scenarios when it comes to the draft, but that's mostly when I see random stuff involving multiple players and picks and the like. This scenario, however, is pretty realistic and makes a lot of sense. The 49ers are sitting at a position where they could either land one of the very top guys who falls and also fills a need, be it moderate or huge (Patrick Peterson, Von Miller and to a lesser extent, Marcell Dareus), or they could grab a secondary guy at those positions, which wouldn't qualify as a reach, but could still probably be acquired a few picks back.
Barrows cites this article, in which John McClain says he's heard that the Washington Redskins are trying like crazy to trade up to acquire one of the top quarterbacks, supposedly Blaine Gabbert of Missouri. Barrows explains the way the 49ers fit into this via Twitter:
Houston Chron's John McClain hears Redskins want to trade up for a QB he suspects is Blaine Gabbert ... If so ... logical trade partner are the 49ers, who pick ahead of Tennessee. 9ers could then take same group of players, Amukamara, Quinn, Jones?.. they already are looking at and have extra ammunition with which to trade back into the first round for a QB they like. Q.E.D. .. (From three tweets: here, here and here)
Barrows makes a good point and the situation is definitely plausible, as the 49ers could stand to get the best value out of their picks at number ten if those are the players they're interested in, and could get even more ammunition with which to trade back into the first round with one of the latter teams. Barrows notes later that Pittsburgh would be a good trade partner for the 49ers to get back into the first to get one of the quarterbacks they may have their eyes on, like Jake Locker, Colin Kaepernick, or Christian Ponder.
The only caveat to this theory is that, at pick ten, the 49ers would probably like to get someone like Robert Quinn or Prince Amukamara, but the two teams directly after them (or in this scenario, before them) could be interested in those very players. In lieu of getting one of the top quarterbacks, the Tennessee Titans could be after Quinn, while the Dallas Cowboys are the favorites to draft Amukamara if he's not gone to San Francisco.
Still though, the 49ers could stand to get some great players there like Julio Jones, Cameron Jordan, J.J. Watt, Aldon Smith, Jimmy Smith ... the list goes on, and I honestly can't see a way this ends up bad for San Francisco. The possible third or fourth round pick they would get by swapping with the Redskins would be perfect in helping the 49ers get back into the first (note that these would be 2012 picks in that case, the Redskins do not have any 2011 3rd or 4th round picks). This is all predicated on Gabbert or Newton being around at pick seven, of course.