u/AnalAttackProbe

A lot has been said over the past several days about how the 49ers have drafted poorly pretty much since John Lynch's second or third season due to a tendency to reach on draft picks. I was curious if the numbers actually supported this conversation, so I decided to do some number crunching.

A couple notes on the methodology:

For starters, the baseline I will use for determining a player's value is Pro Football Reference's wAV (weighted career approximate value) calculation. In order to normalize for the different amount of years played across these drafts, that wAV calculation was divided by the number of years in the league to determine wAV/Yr.

Second, I calculated all these figures twice, once as a raw data set, and once after applying a weighting system to the draft picks, to normalize for per-round expectations. A first round pick comes with the expectation the drafted player would outperform a player drafted in the seventh round.

This statistical analysis is based on a player's entire career, not just their time with the 49ers. The goal here is to see how well the front office identifies talent, not how well they hold onto it.

Lastly, 2025 wasn't included because frankly I don't think a single year is enough data.

49ers Draft Value By Year

The 2018 class has the highest total wAV/yr contribution, while 2020 had the highest wAV/yr per pick.

When pick value is added to the equation different years become stronger but 2023 is still terrible.

According to these metrics, I would probably rank the 49ers drafts as follows:

1. 2018 (strong performers, strong per pick)
2. 2020
3. 2021
4. 2024
5. 2022
6. 2019
7. 2017
8. 2023 (weak performers, weak per pick)

The bang for the buck in 2020 was honestly pretty incredible. For context, a 4.51 round-adjusted average wAV/year means that the 5 picks in 2020 averaged out to be slightly better than the DJ Reed pick from 2018. Reed, a 9-year player with 125 NFL games under his belt, carries an Adj wAV/year of 4.39. In 2020 the Niners' 5 picks were Javon Kinlaw, Brandon Aiyuk, Colton McKivitz, Charlie Woerner, and Jauan Jennings.

It's interesting, the Niners have been far more consistent overall than I would have thought.

Next, I wanted to see how the 49ers did evaluating talent at different positions. We already know the Niners suck at evaluating running backs, but are the numbers as bad as we think? Are there other positions the team sucks at evaluating? What about positions that are evaluated well? Also, what positions get drafted the most, and what truly gets neglect?

49ers Draft Value By Position

Niners really need to just stop drafting RBs, Ps, and Ks.

When you adjust for the round players were drafted in this quickly becomes a Brock Purdy chart.

So many things weren't surprising about this data. As expected, Niners can't draft running backs for shit. And shouldn't be drafting kickers or punters at all. But we already knew that. Was a little shocked by the TE numbers being as bad as they are, even with George Kittle being a HOF TE. But I think I was most surprised on the number of wide receivers that have been drafted. Couple really solid hits and a couple really bad misses equates to very average performance at the position picked most.

The team's been the most successful identifying talent at defensive tackle, linebacker, safety, and along the offensive line.

I've spent a lot of time talking about adjusting the draft to account for the expectations of each round. How about we take a look at how the team performs by round?

49ers Draft Value By Round

First rounders have the highest overall wAV/Yr, but that is to be expected. Niners seem to get great results in the 2nd and 5th rounds.

Adjusting a bit to normalize for per-round expectations, the over performance in the 5th round really stands out, and the 1st round looks a bit less successful.

The 49ers really do love the 5th round. It has given the team some incredible value over the years. George Kittle, Dre Greenlaw, DJ Reed, Deommodore Lenoir, Talanoa Hufanga, and Colton McKivitz were all 5th rounders. To put that 4.11 Adj wAV/Yr per pick into perspective, the 49ers average 5th rounder is basically Kalia Davis (4.20).

These last couple charts got me wondering a bit more about individual performance. Who have been the best 49ers draft picks under John Lynch and Kyle Shanahan? Who have been the worst?

For that, we'll go back to that round-adjusted wAV/year number.

49ers Best and Worst Picks

This feels like a pretty accurate representation of the best picks of the Shanahan/Lynch era.

Likewise, this feels like a pretty accurate representation of the worst picks of the Shanahan/Lynch era.

So what'd we learn today? How does all of this compare to the rest of the league?

...The answer to both questions is that frankly, I don't know. It was enough effort to do this for the Niners. They're the team I care about and they're the team you care about. Get excited when the 49ers invest in OL, because they do a pretty good job evaluating it. Most of the defense, too. The team really needs to get better at finding TEs and RBs.