The San Francisco 49ers were able to convince the Chicago Bears to do a draft day deal, and there was a certain measure of bluffing involved. The 49ers did not know for certain that the Bears were going to draft Mitchell Trubisky with the pick, but general manager John Lynch said after the draft that teams don’t make those kinds of deals for anything other than a quarterback.
After the draft, Lynch met with the media and he said that getting Solomon Thomas and Reuben Foster netted them two of their top three players. Lynch confirmed that Myles Garrett was the third player, but he had another particularly interesting comment.
Someone asked Lynch if the 49ers would have taken Foster had the Bears decided to take Thomas at No. 2. It is a hypothetical, but Lynch offered a bit of a sheepish laugh and said it was likely they would have.
It is possible he is BS’ing a bit, but there have been numerous reports stating that he was high on the 49ers draft board. Bleacher Report’s Matt Miller and MMQB’s Albert Breer both reported that a month ago. Additionally, I heard late last week that Foster was a guy they had been considering at No. 2 prior to the other issues.
I am curious if the 49ers were ready to move past him and take Thomas, and then when he slipped as far as he did, they decided it was worth pouncing. Lynch said that they began making calls about moving back up when Foster was there in the early teens. There were reports they spoke with the Detroit Lions at 21, but Lynch said they spoke with everybody around there.
We’ll never know what it would have cost to go higher. Considering it only cost them the fourth round pick they got from the Bears to climb from No. 34 to No. 31, it turned out OK for them.