Shawn McVeigh thought the 49ers might trade the TE Kyle Pitts draft at No. 3

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When the San Francisco 49ers traded a raft of draft picks for a move to third overall in the 2021 NFL Draft, questions about which player the Niners were targeting were stirring ire in the weeks leading up to the selection.

Most speculation has been about which player behind the San Francisco quarterback sold the farm to get him to join Jimmy Garoppolo. Mac Jones vs Tre Lance was the hottest April debate.

At the time, there was another much smaller faction of observers who thought the Niners might shock the world and chose Kyle Bates in Florida. The thought process went that TE was perfect for Kyle Shanahan’s system, and pairing him with George Keitel would make the Niners’ attack nearly unstoppable with what it could do both through the air and on the ground.

During an episode of the Flying Coach podcast with Sean McVeigh and Peter Schrager, the Rams coach said he was among those who thought Shanahan—who joined that recording—was going the Bates’ way.

“I thought there was a possibility that Kyle would go to Bates in third,” McVeigh said via the 49ers Web Zone. “In all seriousness, because he’s a visionary. I’m telling you, I didn’t think it would be a crazy idea because you go back to a time when New Englanders had a tight final set, and they were doing things completely different. You think about what a Kittle is. And then, the thing that makes sense is that Jimmy produced all the way. That’s not a productive thing. It’s the thing that’s available where you say, “We can’t have that,” like, all things.

But I was like, ‘If it wasn’t Mac Jones – and I didn’t study Trey, just because there wasn’t much of a movie show in a few years and we weren’t in that market, so I didn’t know other than watching him throw in his professional day that you’d say,’ Well, you can see a lot of things you want that will make sense.”

In the end, the Niners chose Lance, who Shanahan then insisted was his choice throughout, despite Jones’s speculation. The Niners’ secrecy had everyone fooled, as Lance himself didn’t know he would be the pick until his phone rang on the night of the draft. Bates ended up going fourth overall to Atlanta.

McVeigh noted that his good buddy had even his division rivals make second guesses.

“He cheated everyone, and he got the people he knew we were looking forward to cheating on us too,” McVeigh said of Shanahan.

It’s interesting to think of the Niners attacking with a weapon like the Pitts, but the price the Niners paid for jumping from 12th to No. 3 – three picks in the first round – always indicated he was a quarterback. It’s the only position worth that price in the long run, even if pairing the Pitts with Kittle would make Shanahan’s attack a nightmare for opposing defenses.

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