There's an old Irish proverb that says, "Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups." This declaration could apply to many areas of our culture, especially politics and government. And it sometimes applies well to sports.
The public outrage over the 49ers' most recent departure from the much-worshipped "NFL Consensus Draft Board" just over one week ago provides a timely example of the enduring truth of the adage.
There's no need to take the message in that bit of old Irish wit literally. The people who come together to make up the consensus draft board, and fans who subscribe to the board's omnipotence, aren't actually stupid. This is not an indictment of the intelligence of any individual involved in the board's creation every year, or of anyone who buys into it. But history has repeatedly shown that "groupthink" often results in an inferior, or at least a misguided, end product.
Critics do have a legitimate basis for their accusations that the 49ers sometimes draft badly. The team hasn't consistently selected well, especially in the earlier rounds, where premium football talent is supposed to be. San Francisco's draft acumen has been finding hidden gems in the back end of the draft. Players like George Kittle, Dre Greenlaw, Jauan Jennings, Deommodore Lenoir, and, of course, Brock Purdy, were all Day 3 picks. By contrast, a large percentage of their early-round picks have proven, season to season, to be non-productive and sometimes, even terrible.
That circumstance has left 49ers General Manager John Lynch and Head Coach Kyle Shanahan open to shots directed at both their methodology and their ability to properly evaluate talent. The kindly dismissive position both men have displayed in the face of that criticism, a stance that some have interpreted as arrogance, has often irritated and even infuriated fans and the media. And it's created a philosophical standoff. Lynch and Shanahan (brushing aside any suggestion that the team's drafting record is dismal) on one side, and critics (both fans and internet media) on the other.
Those calling for Lynch and Shanahan to be reined in or even fired have latched onto the idea that the 49ers' ship is definitely headed for the rocks. It's a hotly debated question, but one that should be looked at with cooler, factual analysis, not emotional preconceptions.
The 49ers' management has displayed a clear stubbornness in listening to opinions outside their own building. That has the capability to be both a good and a bad thing. Shutting down outside noise certainly eliminates information that's either not relevant to their draft process or not factually based, but it also cuts off a source of devil's advocacy that could keep the process in better check.
The consensus draft board is a source of opinion, but it's clearly not one that gets much traction in the 49ers' draft room. The Niners don't much care about the consensus draft projections, and both Lynch and Shanahan have made that crystal clear in post-draft pressers, politely, but without any sliver of ambiguity.
The 49ers' public stance of maintaining a closed-circuit channel of draft intelligence can be frustrating for fans, and it's pushed many toward the extreme of consensus draft board worship that now borders on near-cultish levels. Somewhere along the voyage, a segment of football fans steered off-course and started believing that the consensus draft board was not a group-manufactured opinion, but rather a scientific expression of actual and measurable player value. It's an absurdity that has gotten both fans and media so far out to sea that the dry land of common sense has fallen completely below the horizon.
Here's the revelation: The consensus draft board is speculation, nothing more. It's an arbitrary representation of what a loosely compiled group of people believes college players are worth, relative to one another. It is neither scientific nor intellectually vetted. And the kicker is, it's created by people outside pro football buildings, with no vested interest either in what specific teams need or are trying to accomplish. It is subjective information kneaded inside a lukewarm oven, and it becomes a cake made with thousands of random ingredients, following no specific recipe. And it explains why, despite public perception that it's pristine, it is usually half-baked.
Something that never gets talked about is that, though it is pitched to the masses as the path to certain draft riches, the consensus draft board is often wrong. While critics of the 49ers' draft system rail on about the team's departure from the "enlightened way" of the consensus board, they ignore the very fact that the consensus itself is not particularly adept at predicting elite performance.
A summary historical look at the most recent measurable 10-year block (2014-2023) shows that the consensus board "hits" on Pro-Bowl level players (something that many draft groupies seem particularly fixated on) at a rate of around 22% in the first two rounds. The league's teams, following their own internal mechanisms, hit at about that same rate with actual picks, generally between 20-24%. This indicates that there's no functional difference between what the draft aristocracy and NFL draft rooms as a group can figure out about which players are going to succeed.
Here is something to consider by way of example:
Kadarius Toney (selected in 2021 by the New York Giants), Lewis Cine (drafted by the Minnesota Vikings in 2022), and Cam Smith (taken by Miami in the 2023 draft) were all embraced by the consensus draft board architects at the time as elite players. None of them ever wore a 49ers uniform. Yet they are all relevant examples to the 49ers' draft story.
Here's what they have in common: All three were projected to be taken at or very near pick 33 overall, the same place where the 49ers took wide receiver De'Zhaun Stribling just over a week ago. That pick, as everyone in 49er-land knows now, is what certain draft purists have claimed to be a "massive reach." Three players drafted by NFL teams, at positions projected in the consensus draft board to be late-first or early-second round players. All probably decent guys, but all three clearly what could be considered "draft busts." In other words, the consensus draft board was not just mistaken about the value of these players; it was off, and by a large margin. Their stories are not an anomaly.
The time frame of 2021-2023 isn't presented here randomly. That three-season period is quite undeniably the worst stretch in the Lynch/Shanahan era, as drafting goes. And it's the period most analysts point to when talking about how the 49ers have hamstrung themselves every April.
The team committed an undeniably massive overspend on Trey Lance, burning their first-round picks for three straight years, a maneuver that crippled their rookie strength for multiple seasons. Lance was a clear draft bust, and the trade up to get him at the third overall pick was a boondoggle that's haunted Lynch and Shanahan ever since.
Did the 49ers miscalculate in that 2021 draft? Yes, absolutely, and in a monumental way. But San Francisco wasn't the only team fooled in that draft year, and the consensus draft board was grossly off the mark as well. Beyond Lance, there were Justin Fields, Zach Wilson, Alex Leatherwood, and several others who were wildly overrated, and the consensus board bit down hard on all of them, projecting them into the top of the first round, or close to it. Equally bad for its credibility, the consensus board had other players like Nick Bolton, Amon-Ra St. Brown, and Nico Collins rated down into the drink of later rounds. Adept evaluation? Not by any legitimate yardstick.
This raises the over-riding question: If consensus board devotees can rail against the alleged draft crimes of Lynch and Shanahan, how can they then ignore their own obvious blunders in the same breath? They shouldn't be able to, but they do.
The 49ers, like all teams, make draft plans, but drafting in real time is different, and they know things about particular players the consensus board ducklings don't. That makes drafting not just complicated, but risky and unpredictable. Sometimes they hit; often they don't. That doesn't mean that they should be immune from criticism, but it does mean that leaning into the consensus draft board as the answer is pure bilge water.
Does all this mean the consensus is a waste of time? No. It has application in understanding which players are getting the most attention in college programs scouted by the pros. And there is some relevance to grouping players in a way that helps everyone get a feel for the specific depth of that draft. But it is just one point of reference—one that is highly subjective, and in many ways, impossible to quantify.
Every team in the NFL has different needs, different ideas about what kinds of players will be successful, and a varying sense of which players will "fit" within their roster. Teams place different weights on some variables over others, such as speed, size, experience, character, and many other aspects of a player's game. There is no "one-size-fits-all" evaluation, and pinning numbers onto the backs of untested rookies is not just misguided, it's often harmful.
As much as draft hedonists try to pretend the contrary, the consensus isn't a reasonable mechanism for determining actual player value, and it simply cannot be trusted as an empirical force for hands-on selection of players. There are too many variables, too many immeasurable components, and too many "fit" issues in place during a draft to lean on a prefabricated and highly speculative consensus board. The consensus board is, at its core, a collective "guess." Nothing more; nothing less.
The 49ers don't need to follow the consensus draft board. They simply need to find the players that can help the team win championships, wherever they may be, whether inside or outside the draft. There's the true path to a sixth Lombardi Trophy. Go out and beat people with the quality players you've brought in, regardless of where you found them or who supported your decision. Fawning over a draft board consensus isn't just unproductive; it's also the hidden trap that often leads to bad roster chemistry and ultimate mediocrity.
Years from now, when the 49ers have hopefully added a few more trophies to their case, no one will remember that Lynch and Shanahan strayed away from popular opinion in the players they chose. Just win and keep on winning. With those championships, reasonable people won't care about random misses, even when the 49ers stink up the draft with guys who will never work out in the long run.
In the words of John Madden, another creator of Irish proverbs: "Winning is a great deodorant."
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