Shanahan says the 49ers had a third-round grade on Dre Greenlaw

This will be our stream for the week in what will be a jam-packed week since the 49ers play the Seahawks on Thursday. We’ll update the injury reports, analysis, and everything else you can think of during game week here.

This quote about Dre Greenlaw stuck out to me from Kyle Shanahan Tuesday:

You touched on how great LB Dre Greenlaw’s play was in the conference call the other day. I’m curious, when he was drafted as a fifth-round draft pick, did you see things in him right away that indicated to you that he could be this kind of player or did it just sort of happen that way?

“He stuck out pretty early. He was a linebacker we liked a lot. I think we had a third-round grade on him and we didn’t think we could go for a linebacker that early and similar to [TE George] Kittle. We liked Kittle a lot too, but we couldn’t go up there where we thought they were going to go. And I think Greenlaw we got in the fifth, so he ended up falling a little bit less than we expected and we felt very fortunate to get him there. We had just brought in [New York Jets LB Kwon] Alexander, that’s why we didn’t totally need a linebacker at the time, but we felt fortunate in the fifth round that he was available, so you could see right in camp that we got a much more talented linebacker than it seemed in the draft. And when he got on the field in base, he was making plays and then when Kwon went down, it gave him so much more reps and he only got better when that happened.”

The team had a third-round grade on Greenlaw but snagged him in the third round. Greenlaw has left his mark every time the team has played against Seattle.