The Kansas City Chiefs in 2017 traded two first-round picks to move up to No. 10 in the draft and select quarterback Patrick Mahomes, who took over as the starter the following year. They did so despite veteran signal caller Alex Smith playing well enough to get the team to the postseason in 2016, and then turning in the best season of his career in 2017. The 49ers in 2021 find themselves in a similar spot, but head coach Kyle Shanahan isn’t looking at all at how the Chiefs’ transition went.
The 49ers traded three first-round picks to jump from No. 12 to No. 3 in this year’s draft, where they’ll presumably pick a quarterback who’ll sit behind veteran Jimmy Garoppolo for a year before taking over next season.
It’d make sense for San Francisco to try and seek some guidance from Kansas City on threading this very difficult needle. Shanahan on Monday in a press conference refused to draw a comparison between the 49ers’ situation this year and Kansas City’s in 2017.
“I think that’s the most obvious example of having a really good quarterback and drafting a young guy and still having success that year with your veteran and moving on the next year,” Shanahan said. “That’s the nearest one we have to go off of, but I don’t really look at stuff like that because I think each situation is its own situation. When you go back to other years, they traded this for this so is this worth it? Each situation has its own situation.
“I look at ours, I learn from everything through my own experience and just reading about football and watching it over the years. That’s why we all develop our opinions, but just like the perfect play call or the perfect throw, you don’t know until the end of it. Stuff is adjusting at all times and you’ve got to always be ready to adjust and do the best with opportunities you have.”
The Chiefs drafted Mahomes, started him in the final game of the year – which didn’t impact their standing in the playoff race – and then inserted him as the starter in 2018 after trading Smith to Washington in the offseason. Smith put together the best season of his career, but went winless in the postseason for a second-consecutive year.
It’s still unknown how the 49ers would handle a similar situation, which is why Shanahan didn’t commit to saying they’re following Kansas City’s path. The Chiefs were sitting on Mahomes, who won the MVP in his first year as a starter. The 49ers may not be sitting on that type of talent, and if Garoppolo plays the best football of his career and leads the team back to the Super Bowl, it could change how they handle the ensuing offseason.
There’s also a chance a team blows the 49ers away with a trade before this season and they deal Garoppolo to start the rookie or a different veteran.
Like Shanahan said, every circumstance is unique. Perhaps the 49ers do follow the same mold as the Chiefs. There are a ton of different directions for it to go though, and simply sticking on one path because another team did it would not be the best way for San Francisco to conduct itself in an extremely delicate situation.
