The 49ers attacked the 2022 NFL draft differently than any draft of the John Lynch-Kyle Shanahan tenure. They didn’t make any trades and stood pat with their nine picks. None of their selections are the type that shows urgency in getting production this year.
In fact, it wouldn’t be a surprise of the 2022 class became a much bigger factor in 2023 when the 49ers are set to lose a handful of players in free agency. They went into this year’s draft needing to establish some better depth and just ensure that they’re putting good players on their roster.
Given that a slew of their nine picks figure to contribute very little as rookies, it’s hard to issue grades. Frankly, nobody knows whether prospects are good picks or not because we’ve never seen them play in the NFL. College success and production doesn’t always reflect NFL success and production.
A more accurate grade of a player can’t really come until they’ve been in the league for a few years. So instead of placing grades that try to guess if a player is going to be a good NFL player, we went over the process for the 49ers.
These grades should be viewed with this question in mind: How good was the idea behind the pick and does it make sense for their roster construction now and in the future?
Let’s get to the grades: