Day 2 of the 2017 NFL Draft is over and there were some nice things from the San Francisco 49ers. John Lynch made some good moves, and the team picked up some draft capital for 2018.
Personally, I like the selection of Ahkello Witherspoon a lot. I think he’s a starting-ready cornerback with great press coverage skills. I don’t know how I feel about the selection of C.J. Beathard. Everything I’ve seen makes him look like a late-round guy, but I have watched limited tape on him.
Unfortunately, most people seem to agree that it was a bad pick, especially in the third round. Once again, we’re going to take a look at some grades from the third round from around the Internet.
We’ll start with SB Nation’s baseline grades, of course. They were the harshest on the 49ers’ Day 1 moves, but they — at least — liked the signing of Witherspoon, giving his signing an ‘A’ grade. The signing of Beathard, however, wasn’t well-received. Beathard’s selection garnered a ‘C-’, which is pretty harsh.
After being uncharacteristically positive on the 49ers following Day 1, Pete Prisco of CBS Sports was not incredibly impressed with the Witherspoon pick, giving the team at “B+” “They need cover players and this kid can handle it,” Prisco said. Then he\\ gave San Francisco a “C” for the Beathard pick.
Moving on to Chris Burke of Sports Illustrated, this is what he had to say about the Witherspoon pick:
“Solomon Thomas, Reuben Foster and now Witherspoon. That’s a potential impact playmaker at all three levels of the defense. Witherspoon can be an antidote against teams with big receivers, because of his height and ability to go up for the ball. Whether or not he can be more than that remains to be seen.”
And we’ve got our worst grade for Beathard yet, with Burke giving the 49ers a ‘D’ grade for it. He said that the 49ers absolutely overpaid to move up and that it was too early to take someone like Beathard.
Again sticking with the grades from last time, we move on to Walter Football. They give the Witherspoon pick a “B+”, saying he has “consistency issues.” They also panned the 49ers for trading up for Beathard and compared the pick to the Browns taking Cody Kessler.