The San Francisco 49ers are in a prime position to enjoy a significant upgrade to their depleted roster during this off-season. Among all 32 teams, the Niners are in the fourth best position in terms of salary cap and they have an enormous number (12) of draft picks available. This is practically an embarrassment of riches for a team coming off a dismal 2015 season.
If they were any other team, fans would be justified in jumping up and down with joy, but Niners fans have come to expect raging mediocrity when it comes to the quality of the team’s management. Trent Baalke has among the poorest track records of any general manager in the NFL when it comes to picking talent and managing player personnel. His record in the draft borders on pathetic. During its heyday, the team was characterized by brilliant and insightful draft choices, which often surprised other NFL observers and Niners fans but which proved with time to be exceedingly wise.
Not so much in recent seasons. Since 2010, when he was named vice president of player personnel preparatory to his promotion to general manager the following season, the Niners’ draft choices have been for the most part mediocre and consistently unexciting. He seems to have a low-risk approach to evaluating and recruiting talent. The problem is, in the NFL today, that “play not to lose” strategy doesn’t even achieve its paltry goal of keeping your record above water.
The blogosphere is alive with advice to Baalke about how to use that salary cap space and that dozen draft picks. I’m not going to attempt to offer any further advice here. But given his track record, it might behoove him to seek additional counsel before making decisions about how to augment the team’s current weakened roster. Free agency appears to be a better route this season for most skilled positions, as the draft appears relatively shallow. It might therefore be a good idea to trade some of the team’s draft picks for free agency choices. Beyond that, the Niners GM really needs to examine his history and chart a more adventurous and potentially successful course of action for this hopeful off-season.