It turns out the 49ers never wanted to draft Alabama quarterback Mac Jones despite rampant rumors he was the going to be their selection at No. 3 overall, and there was never even a rift between head coach Kyle Shanahan and the scouting department over whether to take Jones according to Shanahan.
The 49ers’ head coach during his post-draft press conference explained his view on the buzz around Jones and the third pick.
“Now, we wanted an opportunity to go and look at everybody, but I think just looking at this whole process, I think I was in Mexico the day we made the trade and within hours, there’s at least two people who are out there speculating that their opinions are they think we’re taking Mac Jones and ever since then, I’ve kind of just watched every single person assume that that was accurate and that those weren’t opinions, those were facts,” Shanahan said in a video conference. “We didn’t feel that way from the beginning. I wouldn’t have said there’s no chance we wouldn’t have. We were going to go through this process and I would never have said it couldn’t have ended up being him, but I know how we felt about Trey the whole time.
“To watch that happen and to kind of watch everyone just assume, because a couple people say something, that’s exactly how you feel, we weren’t going to work to correct that. At all. I thought that could be an advantage for us, especially when you look into stuff that just came out today. Stuff that, I mean, you never know with this league. If the whole NFL is assuming you’re doing one thing and you’re not doing that, I’m not going to work hard, and John, we’re not going to work hard to correct that.”
An interesting note after the pick came from ESPN’s Adam Schefter who reported on Twitter that nobody in the scouting staff nor coaching staff knew who the selection would be until it was announced Thursday night.
That would jibe with the idea that most of the speculation around who the pick would be came from places outside the building, or from people guessing inside the building. Perhaps there were deliberately laid smoke screens to help fuel those initial rumors.
In fairness to people who thought it would be Jones, he fits the traditional Shanahan type. He’s accurate, good in the pocket, and delivers on time to his receivers. That wasn’t what the 49ers’ head coach was looking for this time though.
He bucked that trend with Lance, and the silence from the building kept that possibility from really gaining steam until the hours leading up to the draft when belief Lance would be the pick became more prevalent.
It was a fascinating pre-draft process, and the 49ers apparently didn’t have to do much to fuel the confusion over who they might take with the No. 3 pick.
