San Francisco 49ers general manager John Lynch, who on Saturday just completed his first NFL Draft, headed to San Diego to be with his family following the hectic three days. However, he carved out enough time to join "Murph & Mac" on KNBR on Monday to discuss the draft.
Lynch is obviously good at multitasking – a skill necessary for any NFL general manager. He revealed that he was in the car with his wife during the interview, taking his daughter and a couple of her friends on a school field trip to Mission San Juan Capistrano. Lynch went straight from a crazy three-day draft as a rookie general manager to a fourth-grade field trip.
Lynch went on to discuss the trade up for Iowa quarterback C.J. Beathard. Following the selection of Colorado CB Ahkello Witherspoon in the third round, Lynch said that he and the 49ers seriously considered calling it a day and going home and resting up for Day 3.
"As we were sitting there, we had really zeroed in on C.J. Beathard for a long time during the draft process," Lynch said. "We had studied him a lot. Kyle's got a very specific eye on quarterbacks. The traits he likes, the makeup he likes, and he was a guy who we had zeroed in on as being a great guy to work with and develop. We wanted him to come to us but we had such a fortuitous happening earlier in the draft – the trade with Chicago – that we had a lot of picks, a lot of ammo, we already came into the draft with 10 picks, we gained another in a trade with the Denver Broncos – another fifth-rounder – so we had all this ammo and my feeling was, 'This is a guy that we want.'
"I think there were some that would be worried about the perception. If we're trading up to get him then people are going to think he's the guy we want to start. I don't care about perception. If we like the guy, we've got the ammunition to go do it, let's sleep well tonight knowing we got him. We were able to make the move, pick up C.J. Beathard, and we're glad we did it."
This morning, Peter King of The MMQB posted a fantastic article about the experience within the 49ers draft room. The article has generated a ton of buzz and within it, King revealed that head coach Kyle Shanahan compared Beathard to Washington Redskins quarterback Kirk Cousins, who he is also fond of. "He processes the game so well," Shanahan said in the 49ers draft war room after selecting Beathard. "Tough as s---. Got a chance. He reminds me a lot of Kirk Cousins."
"I think the things that reminded Kyle – he's extremely tough," Lynch said on KNBR of the comparison. "When you watch him play, he stands in there facing the fan, as we like to say, with guys coming. He's not afraid to do that. He does that over and over. He's very accurate. It's a quick release and a powerful torque there in his throwing motion and he can do it without having to have a lot of space. It's one thing that Kyle appreciates about quarterbacks – when they don't need a lot of space to make throws because the reality in this league, I think defensive line play as good as ever and it's hard to find good offensive lineman – there's going to be people in your face."
Lynch went on to say that even though Beathard's numbers were down in 2016, he still displayed that same toughness in the pocket and that's why the 49ers liked him so much. "As I mentioned, we didn't have him ranked as high as a third-rounder – we wanted to get him in the fourth – but we had too many picks, frankly, to just sit there and take players so I said, 'Guys, come on, we can do this easily. Let's go get someone we all like and to heck with the perceptions.'"
You can listen to the entire interview on KNBR.