Jed York: You’re probably not winning a Super Bowl without a franchise QB

The San Francisco 49ers announced on Wednesday that later this fall, fullback Tom Rathman will be inducted into the franchise Hall of Fame. After the ceremony, CEO Jed York was making the media rounds, and he took a moment to chat with NFL Network reporter Steve Wyche.

Although John Lynch and Kyle Shanahan are running the football show, Wyche had a couple football questions for York. You can view the video at the bottom of the page, but here is what he had to say when asked if the team needs a quarterback, and the timeline for getting this thing turned around.

On needing a QB in this year’s draft:

Look, you need to get the best players, wherever they are, whatever you need to do. You need to find the best players, and it’s proven that if you don’t have a superstar quarterback, you’re probably not getting to the Super Bowl, and you’re probably not winning a Super Bowl.

On timeline for new coach and GM, and any sense of urgency:

I think the important thing is, these guys are gonna be here for awhile. And we’d all love to win this year, we’d all love to get to where we wanna go. But we’re a two-win team. And I’m seeing the things you need to see in the offseason, with the new strength coach, Ray Wright, they’re doing a great job getting the guys to buy in, and really starting to work hard. And that all starts today.

The 49ers have been connected to Mitchell Trubisky with the No. 2 pick, and spent plenty of time looking over DeShaun Watson, DeShone Kizer, Patrick Mahomes, and Davis Webb. It’s a safe bet they looked at some QBs further down the chain. People will read into Jed’s comments, but he isn’t saying anything we don’t already know. There are few instances where a team wins the Super Bowl without a really good quarterback.

You could make an argument the Denver Broncos won Super Bowl 50 with Peyton Manning playing pretty badly by the end. But that example, and any other not so good QB example on a Super Bowl winning team was usually surrounded by a potentially all-time great defense. Joe Flacco won with the Ravens, but, well, we won’t get into that too much.

I don’t know if “superstar quarterback” would be the right term, but yes, a really good quarterback is a big plus in attempting to win a Super Bowl. I wouldn’t read too much into what it means about the No. 2 pick.