San Francisco 49ers general manager John Lynch has already stated that the team's current regime will never get involved in tanking for draft picks. It just isn't in Lynch or head coach Kyle Shanahan's makeup. They have a strong desire to win every game.
That hasn't happened a lot this season.
The reality is that if the 2018 season were to end today, Lynch's 49ers would own the top overall pick in next year's draft thanks to the Oakland Raiders beating the Arizona Cardinals on Sunday. That could change if San Francisco finds a way to turn things around. It won't change if they don't.
Lynch isn't looking at something that is five months away. In fact, he sounded a little embarrassed during a Wednesday-morning interview on KNBR that the 49ers are in the driver's seat for the No. 1 pick.
"It's not something that you're really proud of, to be honest with you," Lynch said on the "Murph & Mac" show. "I remember thinking, 'Hey, those days are gone, of drafting top 10.' Hey, that's the reality of this league. Some things happen, and here we are.
"We've been in a number of games. We haven't figured out a way to finish. So more the focus has been on how we fix that. That goes for me in terms of the type of players we bring in. What is it that we're missing? I think that starts to crystallize. You start to see where we are a little deficient.
"The one thing I do know, the fact that we've been in all these games, we have enough in this building right now to be competitive each and every week. Now we've got to figure out how to close people out. When we have those opportunities, how do we finish people? That was a big focus of our bye week."
You can listen to the entire conversation with Lynch below.
One player who took the bye week message to heart is running back Matt Breida, who also joined KNBR on Wednesday morning.
"We've got to learn how to finish," Breida said. "We're right there until the end. We've just got to learn how to put games away. I can't tell you how many countless games we've lost by two or three points. I feel like that's part of growing for a young team, losing those tough moments so later on, we win in those tough moments."
You can listen to the entire conversation with Breida below.