Lynch explained that he and Bears general manager Ryan Pace, who he has known for three or four years, had been talking since last week. This week, the talks progressed a bit with Pace saying that they may be interested in working out a deal in the first round.
"There wasn't a firm offer yet from other people but there was interest, similar to what Ryan and I had per discussions," Lynch said. "We left it at, 'Let's just stay in touch.'"
The discussions with Chicago progressed on Thursday, as did discussions with other interested teams. "Ultimately, (Chief Strategy Officer and Executive Vice President of Football Operations) Paraag (Marathe) did a wonderful job of continuing to progress it while we were focused on watching the draft."
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Lynch went on to discuss his thoughts on Thomas. "He's a disruptive player," Lynch said. "Last week, on Saturday, we all sat in our draft room – myself, (head coach) Kyle (Shanahan), (VP of player personnel) Adam Peters, and (Senior Personnel Executive) Martin Mayhew. We really challenged ourselves to come up with our vision statement basically for this draft and as we went through that, Solomon checked every box, both in talent and the spirit that he embodies, the character on and off the field.
"The kid's a great football player too and he plays with a tremendous amount of passion. He's got tremendous versatility. We just couldn't be happier."
Lynch revealed that he believes that Chicago got a fine player at number two. The Bears selected North Carolina quarterback Mitchell Trubisky. Lynch said that the new Bears quarterback was the 49ers' highest rated quarterback on their draft board.
You can listen to the entire interview on KNBR.
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