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According to Daniel Jeremiah of NFL Network, the “majority of people around the league believe” that the San Francisco 49ers will select Mac Jones of Alabama with the recently acquired No.3 pick in the 2021 NFL Draft.
These people are probably wrong.
General manager John Lynch and head coach Kyle Shanahan spoke openly on Monday about taking a quarterback with this selection, and prominent members of the national and local media are confident the choice will be used on Jones, widely regarded as the fifth best quarterback in draft. .
Chris Simms of NBC Sports thinks the 49ers want a quarterback “who’s ready for the NFL right now, not a draft,” and for him, “that says Mac Jones.” ESPN’s Chris Mortenson agreed with Simms, noting that “Kyle Shanahan had success with Matt Ryan and he and Mike Shanahan had a love for Kirk Cousins,” while NBC Sports Bay Area’s Matt Maiocco thinks Shanahan “wants a quarterback who executes the plan “and” Shanahan’s plan never asks the quarterback to come out of the pocket and run with the ball. “
It’s naive to believe that Shanahan is so dogmatic when it comes to looking for a quarterback. While it’s true he’s had success with pocket passer who have great intelligence but limited mobility, they’re rarely the best quarterbacks in the modern NFL, and Shanahan seems to know it.
After his team was torn to pieces in December by Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen – an athletic phenomenon who was hardly a refined pocket passer entering the league – a melancholy Shanahan provided insight into how he came to see the quarterback position. The clip was brought back to the spotlight by Akash Anavarathan from Niners Nation.
“The way I evaluate everything is always changing,” Shanahan said of how I evaluate quarterbacks. “Things change, people change, you start to see that you can win football games with any kind of quarterback as long as they’re good enough, and you can be good enough in hundreds of different ways. So I rate quarterbacks trying to find people who can have a shot at being one of those elite guys, and there are a lot of different ways of doing it.
“You can see now that there are a lot of different ways. I don’t think that will ever change, I don’t think you have a certain thing or a type that you are looking for, you are just trying to find a guy who is better than about 98% of the people on this planet or country, and when you find that, you grab it and adapt to it. “
Cousins and Ryan were never really “elite guys”, let alone “better than 98% of the people on this planet”. Of course, Shanahan could win with them, but it’s fair to assume he’s come to desire more of the quarterback since then.
The original sin of the Shanahan-Lynch era was to pass Patrick Mahomes and Deshaun Watson to the top of the 2017 NFL Draft because the two did not fit “Shanahan’s offense,” as the future 2018 free agent Kirk Cousins was a known fit. The team’s initial plan was to sign Cousins at the start of the 2018 offseason, but that plan was shelved when the New England Patriots offered them Jimmy Garoppolo.
Lynch has since admitted that the decision to bypass Mahomes and Watson would likely ‘haunt’ him ‘for a while’, and Shanahan has lost to teams with quarterbacks outside of his original mold like Allen, Lamar Jackson, Russell Wilson and Kyler Murray.
Which brings us to this clip of the defeated Shanahan, going through a 2020 season marred by poor quarterback play, aspiring to find a quarterback who has the traits of being “better than about 98% of the people on that game. planet”.
While Jones has the traits that a young Shanahan – enamored with cousins and pocket-pass dogmas – may have coveted, the Alabama product lacks the tools to be “one of those guys.” elite ”. What if another quarterback in that draft class – whether it’s BYU’s Zach Wilson, Ohio State’s Justin Fields, or North Dakota’s Trey Lance – has those tools but isn’t not necessarily an “adjustment” in your team’s offense?
“You take it and you adapt to it,” Shanahan explained.
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