Copyright Santa Rosa Press Democrat
The NFL trade deadline is one of the great circuses of America’s preeminent entertainment product. It’s a day built on a foundation of fantasy, desperation, delusion, and immediate gratification. And on Tuesday, the 49ers skipped participating in it. The collective online crash-out from the Faithful and the misinformed was predictable, but here’s a dose of reality: General Manager John Lynch and his crew did exactly what they should have done. Yes, the 49ers need help. They need bodies. Present tense. But let’s be specific about what they actually needed before the deadline: high-quality, young, cheap, and controllable talent for this year and, more importantly, the next few. Now, I’ll ask you the question that should make you pause before firing off that next angry tweet: Do you know how many young, cheap, controllable, and high-quality players were available for trade on Tuesday? It’s a trick question. The answer is zero. No sane NFL executive is trading a player like that. If you want that kind of player, you have to draft them. But here’s what was available: rentals, flawed stars trading on past glory, and guys who are going to hold their new team hostage for a massive payday come the summer. And the price for those players was absurd. There are seller’s markets, and then there was the 2025 NFL trade deadline. You saw the mayhem. The Colts traded two first-round picks for a cornerback who’s been living off his rookie-year reputation for the past four seasons. The Cowboys coughed up a first and a second-rounder for a good player who is almost certainly going to stage a highly publicized mid-summer holdout for a new contract. (Now that I think about it, maybe that’s the reason Jerry Jones made that deal. It’s an attention economy, baby!) Lynch looked at the posted prices, and then his roster, and decided to keep his wallet closed and not buy used goods with a credit card that charges usury-level interest. Lynch hasn’t done a ton right in recent years, but he nailed this decision. After all, San Francisco was not one big-name player away from a Super Bowl. This roster, decimated by cost-cutting and now utterly cursed by injury, simply has too much attrition to fix with one big swing. And if this disaster of a season (which still stands with a 6-3 record) has proven one thing, it’s that the Niners still need depth. Given their current cap situation — they’ve spent so much money retaining their stars that they’re already over the salary cap for the 2027 season — the only practical way to build that depth is through the draft. After tying up all of their movable Day 3 picks in the 2026 draft in other deals, the Niners held onto their first, second, and third-round picks — all those valuable top-100 selections — and didn’t touch their future capital in 2027, either. Now, let me be perfectly clear: I’m not saying Lynch and the front office have been good in recent years. Prioritizing special teams in free agency this past spring and outsourcing draft scouting to position coaches were failures that resulted in a top-100 pick who can’t even get on the field for the most injured team in the league and a total lack of insulation against that now-predictable onslaught of injuries. But standing pat at this deadline? That was the sharp play. Plus, the Niners made a sensible trade for Keion White last week. If that move happened Tuesday, would anyone even be complaining? I doubt it. But six days is apparently too far back to remember in the NFL news cycle. And in this what-have-you-done-for-me-lately world, I suppose it’s a fool’s errand to ask anyone to remember this moment come April. But while the fans are whining about not keeping up with the Joneses (literally), Lynch has kept the Niners in good long-term standing to land the players this roster actually needs. The Niners survived the trade-deadline madness and kept what remained of their powder dry. The price of doing nothing was far lower than the price of doing something rash and stupid. And for that, San Francisco fans will eventually thank Lynch.
