The camera shot didn’t seem obtrusive this time, it just seemed like a direct window into the collective sudden bliss of 49ers management right after Christian McCaffrey’s leaping touchdown reception to give the 49ers the lead late in the third quarter at SoFi Stadium last Sunday.
At the center of it, of course, was John Lynch, who looked like he might jubilantly headbutt Jed York into a wall or body slam assistant general manager Adam Peters entirely out of the press box suite. It was raucous. It was joyous. It was, for a few rowdy seconds, an encapsulation of the pressures this team has felt through an unsettling start this season and the release of watching the McCaffrey trade hitting an instant jackpot right before their eyes.
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“Obviously, when you invest that much into a player, you want to see it pay off,” Lynch said on my podcast this week of that celebratory moment. “So to have the immediate returns that we did … I thought he played really well against Kansas City (in McCaffrey’s first game with the 49ers on Oct. 23) in limited scope. But to come see it all come to fruition was tremendous. But I was really more happy for our team. I think it was the first time all year we put all three phases together.
“I think there’s also some context there. We’d been in that stadium before with a 10-point lead (in the fourth quarter of the NFC Championship Game last January, a lead the 49ers did not hold). And I looked up at one point and we had a 10-point lead (24-14 in the fourth quarter on Sunday), you know? That was really frustrating to us because we felt like we had a team that was built to close and we didn’t close. So, albeit in a regular-season game, very important for us going into the bye, for us … to close out a team, that felt really good. …
“I think that was important for us to find that as a team, how good we can be. And we did that without a lot of our best players, and the fact that we’re likely to get a lot of those really good players back after the bye, I think, had me and our team feeling good. Now it’s about going and doing it on a consistent basis. That’s what all those high-fives were all about. You can’t play, you’ve got to have some joy.”
OK, Lynch might’ve mixed up the chronology there a little or just didn’t know exactly when the camera showed all the upstairs jubilation. All fair. Sunday’s game was full of emotions that rippled from the field, sidelines, locker room and management suite. Lynch’s overall point is extremely valid: That 31-14 victory over the Rams felt like a threshold point for this 49ers season, lifting them to 4-4 at the bye week, so quickly after the McCaffrey acquisition and with Arik Armstead, Kyle Juszczyk, Elijah Mitchell and others primed to return from injury soon.
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That Lynch referenced the NFC title game defeat, when the 49ers took a 17-7 lead into the fourth quarter, only to lose 20-17, only adds to the weight of Sunday’s victory and to this 49ers season, entirely. In a lot of ways, the 49ers are still working through their emotions about that loss and still figuring out what they can do to avoid anything similar ever again, starting with this January.
Hello, Christian McCaffrey, goodbye second-, third- and fourth-round draft picks in 2023 and a fifth-rounder in 2024, all sent to Carolina. The 49ers only could trade that much of their future if they were pretty confident about their present. This wasn’t an all-in moment, but it was close.
I asked Lynch: Were you and Kyle Shanahan aiming to acquire any available good offensive player, or was it strictly focused on trying to trade for McCaffrey?
“We really zeroed in on him,” Lynch said. “We liked our team as it was put together. So it had to be a difference-maker. I always love the conversations when you go down and mention something to Kyle. He’s like, ‘Naw, there’s no way we’re getting that guy. There’s no way. You’re dreaming.’ And I said, ‘Well, it’s all right to dream. Let me go work on it, see what we’ve got.’ We kept kind of playing the thing through.
“We were on it early with hopes to close it out before everyone got involved; that wasn’t going to happen. … (The Panthers) had a high standard; they had a high mark set for what it was going to take to move him. And then when you get multiple teams in, it became steep.
“But we really felt that Christian’s impact — he’s such a versatile player, he can do so much in the run game, in the pass game. We felt like he would lift the boats. He’d make Jimmy (Garoppolo) a better player, he’d make our team a better team. I think you add him with Deebo (Samuel) and their skill sets, although they play different positions, they really mirror each other quite well. I think just to add those guys, with the emergence of Brandon Aiyuk, George Kittle, you really present a pick-your-poison type dilemma for defenses. Yeah, it cost a lot in terms of compensation. But in the end, we felt it was well worth it. … He’s not going to throw for a touchdown, run for a touchdown and catch one every game. But just his presence will affect the game in a big way every week.”
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Lynch said that McCaffrey’s personality also easily fits into the locker room’s goofy, self-effacing sense of humor, which was absolutely noticed.
“You can see, even in the celebrations after touchdowns, there’s one that’s really hilarious; Kyle showed it at the team meeting,” Lynch said. “After George scored his touchdown, Christian’s doing this (lifting his arms up) waiting for the hug and George didn’t come and Christian stayed there for about 60 seconds until George finally came and saw him. That’s just representative that he fits in our locker room really well.”
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The mindset of the 49ers’ side going into the trade negotiations: Despite the slow start, they could and should be a Super Bowl contender. You don’t get shots at this every year. They got lucky by keeping Garoppolo as an insurance policy for Trey Lance. They’re watching Garoppolo play very well after Lance’s season-ending injury. The defense is filled with talent. Why not push a few more chips in? Also, Panthers GM Scott Fitterer never explicitly told him that the Rams were the other top bidders for McCaffrey, but Lynch knew this was a 49ers-Rams tug-of-war.
What would Lynch and Shanahan do to make sure they had McCaffrey and the Rams didn’t? A lot.
“We were kind of at a second and a third (in the offer) and we were willing to do something in the next year, which turned out to be the fifth round,” Lynch said. “But then the Rams, I didn’t know who it was, but another team came in, I believe they had a 2, a 3 in ’23, a 4 and 5 in ’24 and a player; we didn’t know who the player was, turned out I think it was Cam Akers. And so Fitterer, who did a really good job throughout the process, came back and said, ‘Look, the way you can make this happen is you guys have a fourth this year, the other team doesn’t. If you give that fourth this year …’ That was a lot for us, but ultimately we said, ‘Hey, for how we believe he can be the difference for us, and we believe this team has a chance for the whole thing this year, let’s go do it.’ I keep saying it, but I’m happy we did.”
And it probably was better to have McCaffrey scoring TDs for the 49ers and not for the Rams playing against the 49ers on Sunday, right?
“Yeah,” Lynch said with a chuckle, “that factored in as well.”
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Here are some other highlights from our conversation:
• Carolina’s recent restructuring of McCaffrey’s deal meant that the 49ers are only paying him $690,000 for the balance of this season, which frees them up for broader thinking on McCaffrey’s remaining high salaries, starting at $11.8 million next season. Basically, if you combine the two seasons, the 49ers can pay a superstar RB an average of about $6 million per season, which is very workable. The 49ers still have to allocate 2023 space for that $11.8 million, but the out-of-pocket dollars make sense.
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“That’s a good point,” Lynch said. “I was blown away, ’cause sometimes these teams do conversions and things to help their cap out and I believe that’s what Carolina did. As a result, Christian was completely pre-paid for this year. That’s why the (trade) comp got so high, too, to have the opportunity with a player like that at the minimum salary, that never happens. …
“Sure, he’s top of the market in the running-back world moving forward, but I think Christian’s so much beyond a running back. I think that’s actually a pretty good number for us. Players like that, you make it work. We’ve got a lot of smart people here that help me along with that type of plan. I think we’re in good shape, I really do.”
• Lynch said he and Shanahan didn’t expect to trade Jeff Wilson Jr. as late as last weekend because nobody was ready to meet their price. Then Miami, coached by former 49ers offensive coordinator Mike McDaniel, came in right at the deadline with the deal-making offer.
“I honestly didn’t believe that it would happen because we were quite clear with teams what our price was, and it was a fifth-round pick,” Lynch said. “And we were going to stay disciplined with that. Because Jeff’s been a really valuable part of this team this year. …
“For a guy that has eight games left on his deal at a running-back position where people just aren’t inclined to trade a lot of capital unless it’s certain players, the absolutely cream of the crop, I just really didn’t think it would happen. I thought we valued Jeff more probably than anyone else did. But it turns out Mike McDaniel had been around him and kind of knew who he was. I think it all made sense.”
• The 49ers don’t have next year’s first-round pick, which is the final piece of the trade with Miami to move up to select Lance (and Miami just sent it to Denver for Bradley Chubb), or their own second-, third- and fourth-rounders. I asked Lynch if the Wilson deal was mainly driven by the need to add something to the 2023 draft cupboard.
“It wasn’t a must, it wasn’t an absolute that we had to, but if an opportunity came around, it would be nice,” Lynch said. “We really value our picks. … There’s a lot of memes out there, stealing a phrase from our friends down south in the Rams, and that was good for them. But we really value our picks. We value our process. We value our college scouting staff and everything they do. So if we had the opportunity to get a pick or two back, we were going to do that.”
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• Lynch made some interesting points about left guard Aaron Banks, who has emerged as a solid starter after he barely played at all last year as a rookie.
“Last year, I think when everybody’s asking and thinking something wrong with him, he wasn’t playing,” Lynch said. “We just ran into a situation where Laken (Tomlinson) was a very solid player and Laken always plays. He always shows up. That’s what makes Laken so special. And played consistently well. Then on the other side you’ve got Danny Brunskill, who’s a grinder and was just hard to beat out. Kyle felt comfortable with him. There were times we thought Aaron was going to go kind of win that job and then Danny Brunskill would play a stretch of really good football. He never got out there, but we were still very high on him.
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“His training camp wasn’t tremendous. So there were some concerns.”
I asked: You mean he struggled in his rookie camp, right? Not this one?
“This year, going into Year 2,” Lynch said. “It wasn’t always great. But to the kid’s credit, he got better each day. I give Chris Foerster, James Cregg, the whole O-line group of coaches … I give them a lot of credit. I give Aaron the most credit, because he kept his head down, he kept grinding. And he’s a gamer. You have to practice well to play well in this league, but he does have a special quality, and I love it. Come game time, he’s a better player than he looks out here on the practice field. And that’s nothing against his work ethic. I just think he’s got this competitive nature and the better the player he’s going against, the better he plays as well. …
“We knew all along this was a bigger body than we’re accustomed to playing with, but he can move extremely well. He’s really holding his own in the run game, that’s where he’s a force. And in the pass pro, he hasn’t given up a sack all year. That’s pretty good. We’re really proud of Aaron, just like we are of Spencer Burford, who’s playing the right guard. He’s an immensely talented kid, really long arms to play the guard position, but can bend, can uncoil, you can see that in the run game when he’s pulling.”
More Lynch thoughts on the offensive line:
“That’s what I really thought stood out in the Rams game,” Lynch said. “Jimmy made some off-schedule, extend the play, like the one to Christian in the end zone. But that was all set up by great pass protection. So I think our O-line is really winding into form.
“Everybody likes to talk about (right tackle Mike) McGlinchey’s woes. But McGlinchey’s had a really good year. It’s been solid and consistent. He had one bad half, a tough half, against the Chiefs. Chris Jones is an All-Pro player. Had some rough snaps. But really pleased with the way Mike’s playing, the whole group is playing.”
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• Lynch has told most of this story before, but I asked him for more details about Amazon Prime making him a huge offer last year to be the lead analyst on the streaming service’s inaugural Thursday night series (a job that eventually went to Kirk Herbstreit). The part I didn’t know: Lynch said that Shanahan and York essentially assumed he was taking the job and leaving the 49ers. It was just so much money, reportedly upwards of $15 million a year. (I’m not the first one to note that this offer is probably relatively open-ended and might be put back to Lynch after this season, or next season, or every season into the future until he finally takes it.)
It started from his previous relationship with legendary NFL producer Fred Gaudelli, who was setting up the Amazon production.
“One day late last season he kind of sent me a note; I said, ‘Freddie, we are in the midst of this thing, I couldn’t possibly sit down and talk with ya,'” Lynch said. “Finally, for a friendship, I just relented, had no idea what they were going to dump on me. And he showed up with some execs from Amazon, we did it at my house … And next thing you know, they dropped this bomb on me, they want to hire me, and Mr. (Jeff) Bezos is very aware of this dinner going on. The price is really not an object. It was like, ‘Whoa, this is a lot.’ I said, ‘I can’t even think about this right now. I’ve got a duty to our team and I feel dirty even being here.’ I was just having dinner with a friend.
“At the end of the year … we didn’t finish in that championship game. And oftentimes, at the end of the season, Kyle’s just so gassed that he’ll say, ‘John, I need ya.’ And every now and then during the season, I address our team. So I just tried to put my thoughts into how we come back from a loss like that. Talked about the courage it was going to take.
“And ultimately, that’s what really got me, other than my loyalties to the York family, how good they’ve been to us, how much we’ve enjoyed this whole situation. And then primarily my relationship with Kyle, my friendship and my respect for him and the coaching staff that we have, my staff, all that weighed in. But ultimately when it came down to making that decision, because the money did get ridiculous, all I could think about was me getting up and talking to that team. And if I left them with unfinished business, I would never feel good. That wouldn’t sit well with me.
“I think I even surprised Kyle and Jed, because they knew. They said, ‘Listen, we love you, we don’t want you to go anywhere, but that’s a hard thing to turn down.’ But ultimately, I did. And I’m happy that I did. Some weeks.”
(Photo: Bob Donnan / USA Today)
