Making Sense of the 49ers Quiet Trade Deadline

In truth, nothing ever really felt like it was truly going to happen, and in the end, it didn't. The 49ers stood pat at the trade deadline, content to let last week's moves for former Patriot Keion White pass-rusher and re-acquiring former defensive lineman Clelin Ferrell to be their only major fortifications to a defensive unit that has lost such All-World talents as Nick Bosa and Fred Warner over the course of the season.

Fans are understandably disappointed - and I'm in no way going to try and salve that disappointment. Feel your feelings, because candidly, I'm disappointed too. I wanted the team to give itself a fighting chance in the later weeks of the season. Even without that, as fans, we always enjoy big, blockbuster moves. For example, even as insane as the Cowboys' deal for Jets defensive lineman Quinnen Williams looks to almost everyone not named Jerry Jones, you can guarantee there's a little spark of life in the Dallas fanbase tonight. No one ever complains about a shot in the arm, to their football team at least.

What I am going to try and do, however, is explain why I think no move was made by the 49ers at the deadline. In the past, both here and elsewhere, I've been accused of being an ownership shill, or a Shanahan/Lynch apologist, and in truth, I don't think I'm either of those things. One of the advantages of being able to write about this team generally at my leisure is being able to allow myself the time to process my emotional response long before words start to form on the screen in front of me, leaving some room for a logical response. That's what I'll try and do here.

The price wasn't right - and for good reason

The first reason for the 49ers' lack of activity is the easiest one to articulate - simply, the prices were not right for the players they'd targeted. That becomes pretty obvious when one looks at the deals that did take place on trade deadline day, with some pretty middling players changing hands for large prices, or, perhaps more germane to the 49ers' position, essentially being left on the shelf due to a high asking price. It's hard to imagine John Lynch going as high as the mooted second-round pick for Jets edge rusher Jermaine Johnson II, especially with relatively little team control left on his contract and with him coming off a torn Achilles in 2024, assuming that was even enough, of course.

Note: While writing this, NFL insider Jordan Schultz confirmed that the Jets' asking price went above the 49ers' value of Johnson in particular:

Put simply, the team just didn't have the ammunition it occasionally has at the trade deadline. It's been a while since the team was able to move multiple mid-round picks for McCaffrey, and given the prices paid today, the 49ers would've likely struggled to meet them even if they had wanted to, looking at what they had available to play with. It's worth pointing out that the team already made four trades this year, bringing in Bryce Huff, Skyy Moore, Brian Robinson Jr. and Keion White over the course of the season. Perhaps this was simply one bullet too many to fire.

That looks even more likely to be the case when you consider the team appears to be following a philosophy of getting younger. The offseason's veteran culling was well-documented, but the team still skews older in average age, and will likely need to replace one key cornerstone in All-Pro tackle Trent Williams this offseason. It's harder to do that without your draft capital, which is probably another reason why any investment made by the 49ers needed to have long-term consequences, rather than just help the team this year.

Lynch and Shanahan deserve the latitude on this

Having typed that last sentence, I can already tell that there are people who are lining up to tell me that 'Lynch and Shanahan don't draft well!' or 'Lynch and Shanahan aren't aggressive enough!' To those people, I can only say, to some, nothing is ever good enough. The 49ers haven't been perfect in drafting, for sure; you all know the names and can no doubt rhyme them off, especially if they fit into 150 characters. Trey Lance. Solomon Thomas. Reuben Foster. Joe Williams. Tyrion Davis-Price. Trey Sermon. They don't get everything right. It'd be churlish of me to say so. But I do think there's an element of ludicrousness about the claims that they don't draft well.

After all, most of the starters on the two Super Bowl teams and the current team were drafted by the team, and are well into large extensions. Brock Purdy. George Kittle. Fred Warner. Deommodore Lenoir. Brandon Aiyuk. Deebo Samuel. Nick Bosa. Jauan Jennings. You get my point. You could even throw in the likes of Dee Winters and Renardo Green from this year's team. I don't profess to know the numbers, but the 49ers seem to have a healthy success rate when it comes to finding home-grown starters, and certainly more recently, they've replenished what was a dying roster with infusions of youth and talent, hence this year's surprising 6-3 record. We should point out as well that the stats aren't skewed - these guys aren't people who got to play because we were a poor team with no better options. These are players who formed part of teams that made several playoff and Super Bowl appearances in Lynch and Shanahan's tenure.

As for the aggressiveness, it's very much a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. You can bet dollars to doughnuts that if we'd given up a 1st or 2nd today for some fairly middling edge rushers (Hendrickson aside), people would still be complaining. It's what they do. For instance, those who now criticise the Foster and Thomas picks were lauding the aggressiveness in their first draft. Those who now criticise Lance were barking about the need for a 'difference-maker' at quarterback in Jimmy Garoppolo's latter years. On the flipside, trading for Christian McCaffrey was felt by some, even paid analysts, to be 'too pricey' in a 'middling season' (and I confess to being one of those) - and now he's arguably the 49ers' best player. There were also little to no complaints when the 49ers made big trades and/or dished out big contracts to the likes of Dee Ford, Javon Hargrave, and Charvarius Ward, although each of those deals is looked back on with varying amounts of scepticism now.

For some, the brain trust in Santa Clara can't win, and it's incredibly frustrating. This team has been a success for most of the last eight years, and the main thing that's held them back from the ultimate success has been running, twice, into the juggernaut that is the Kansas City Chiefs, and even in those games, opportunities were missed to win. There are lots of things I would like to change about the way Lynch and Shanahan see the game - the neglect of the offensive line being one (s/o to my fellow correspondent Jack Stewart on that one) - but I generally believe they do an excellent job.

What does that mean for the rest of the season? I have no idea, but that's been the fun of this season. It could be anything, it could be nothing, it could be everything. While I still would've liked to see a change made today, it didn't happen, and for better or worse, we've got to ride these guys til the end of the season now. Let's see what they can do.