Much was said of San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan and general manager John Lynch's absences from Ohio State's pro day last week. Instead of traveling to Columbus to watch quarterback Justin Fields, a candidate to be drafted with the team's No. 3 overall pick, the duo was in Tuscaloosa for Alabama's pro day, watching Mac Jones.
Why Jones over Fields?
"[Just] talking with Fields' agent [David Mulugheta] and everything, we'll get another one from him too," Shanahan explained last week, per Kirk Larrabee. "So we'll be able to see him. That kind of made it an easy decision."
According to Fields' agent, that next opportunity will come on Wednesday, April 14. That's when Ohio State plans to hold a second pro day.
Per Justin Fields' agent, the plan right now is for Fields to throw again when Ohio State holds pro day No. 2 on April 14. Kyle Shanahan has signaled that the 49ers will be on hand.
— Matt Barrows (@mattbarrows) April 7, 2021
Shanahan and Lynch are likely to be in attendance for that one. Skipping the workout would speak volumes, and the media would likely jump all over an absence.
On March 26, the 49ers traded up to the No. 3 overall pick from the No. 12 spot, putting them in a spot to select their quarterback of the future. Before that, the team's brass strategically avoided some workouts, keeping its desire to move up in the draft a secret. For example, neither Shanahan, Lynch, nor assistant general manager Adam Peters attended North Dakota State quarterback Trey Lance's pro day on March 12. The team did send representatives, though.
"We have people at all the spots — a lot of people we trust and people we'll meet with over the next month," Shanahan told reporters last week. "I normally don't like to go to them a bunch unless I feel I have to for some reason. But I also have been kind of grown up in the idea that you don't like to go everywhere and show people things.
"When you're sitting at 12, I don't like to go to a bunch of quarterback pro days and things like that. Now that you move up to three, you don't have to hide as much. It's not as big of a deal to me as it might have been when we were sitting at 12."