How Much Patience Should 49ers Fans Have with GM John Lynch?

A 49ers fan named David called in with a question that has been quietly building all spring. If this draft class does not work out, should John Lynch be fired?

NFL Network's Tom Pelissero shut the premise down before it got off the ground.

"I don't see a world where John Lynch ever gets fired by the 49ers," Pelissero said. "Same thing with Kyle Shanahan. They have stabilized that franchise after if you remember how things were for several years before they got there. It was a constant churn."

Pelissero ran the through-line. The end of the Jim Harbaugh era. The Jim Tomsula era. The Chip Kelly era. The 49ers have been competitive year after year since Lynch and Shanahan took over.

Where the criticism is fair, Pelissero said, is the top of the draft.

"Top of the draft, bang for the buck hasn't always been there," Pelissero said.

He walked through the first-round record. Solomon Thomas and Reuben Foster in 2017, both misses. Mike McGlinchey in 2018, a really good player on his rookie deal who left for a big contract. Nick Bosa, a hit. Javon Kinlaw, a solid first-round player but not a star. Trey Lance, where Pelissero said the answers might have all been wrong.

"If they'd just taken Mac Jones, is Mac's career completely different?" Pelissero said. "Maybe."

The Niners had no first-round pick in 2022. Drake Jackson at the top of their board. In 2023, no pick in the first two rounds, took Ji'Ayir Brown. Ricky Pearsall in 2024, the receiver who got shot. Pelissero said the jury is still out, with flashes but not a clear number one.

"They've dealt a lot of picks, this is what I'm saying," Pelissero said. "Trades and free agency is where they've supplemented."

Tom pushed back. The fans have a legitimate gripe, especially at the top of the draft. Pelissero conceded the point.

"You'd like to land more superstars in the draft," Pelissero said.

"Or just starters," Tom said.

The conversation pivoted to the masking effect of Brock Purdy. Tom asked Pelissero directly whether Purdy being a hit has covered up the swings and misses elsewhere.

"It masks it in part because they have hit on day three, and there's skill involved in day three," Pelissero said. "All the picks count. We tend to hyper-focus on what you're doing in the first round."

Kyle Shanahan, in Pelissero's view, is the other masking agent.

"Kyle is also better than anyone in the NFL at getting people open," Pelissero said. "It helps to have good players. You had Brandon Aiyuk who performed at a pretty high level until he suffered an injury, and then everything went haywire after that. And in all likelihood he's played his final down in San Francisco."

The Christian McCaffrey trade got credit. Two second-round picks for an offensive engine. The day-three hits on George Kittle and Fred Warner and Purdy himself stack up.

The Trey Lance autopsy got the most time. Pelissero said the COVID class of 2021 was operationally broken. Lance only played one game his last year at North Dakota State. There were no normal evaluations.

"He had all the physical skill sets," Pelissero said. "He's a great dude. And at the start of the draft process, Mac Jones was probably going to be the pick."

The 49ers talked themselves off the safe option. They wanted a player who could do more than the next Kirk Cousins or Matt Schaub or Jimmy Garoppolo. They traded up from 12 to 3 plus a future first to take the swing. Mac Jones was still on the board at 15 to New England.

"In the end, they could have stayed at 12 and gotten Mac Jones," Tom said. "Which is the irony of the entire way that that thing played out."

Pelissero went further on the irony. They could have, in theory, stayed at 12 and picked Micah Parsons, who went 12 to Dallas.

Pelissero also dropped a piece of scouting history on the 2021 quarterbacks.

"Zach Wilson had the best tape of anybody in that draft in his final year of college," Pelissero said. "If you just went on watch the tape of Zach Wilson in 2020 and Trevor Lawrence in 2020, Zach Wilson's tape was better. Now, you had to peel back all the layers of everything else, and know where Zach was playing, know what teammates thought of him, figure out who he was as a person. There were a lot of different things with Zach Wilson that you had to unpack."

The conclusion for the 49ers fan in Atlanta was clear. Lynch is not getting fired. The franchise has been built by trades and free agency. The day-three hits matter. The first-round record is a fair complaint, not a firing offense.