It was part of the trade which they made with the Dolphins to get Trey Lance.
(Parenthetically, the 49ers’ 2023 pick then was traded by Miami to Denver, and recently from Denver to New Orleans, as compensation for the Broncos hiring Sean Payton as head coach.)
Yeah, obviously. My question was attempting to lead @Atamasama to that response, not the peanut gallery. heh.
Okay, I think I understand what you’re arguing. They traded whatever to acquire the #3, so you can’t say they traded away the #3 and what they spent to acquire the #3.
Except that you can say that, and you should. They didn’t have the #3 pick. They had to spend (a lot of) draft capital to get it. So they did, in fact, trade away the #3 plus whatever they also traded to acquire it. Yes, 100%.
Not your bicycle. They didn’t own the #3. They had to acquire it. I see the economics principle you’re getting at, though; if you had to go out and spend $300 on some random bicycle to trade for a record player, you’d say you were out $300, not “$300 and a bicycle.” That wouldn’t make sense, so I’m with you there.
But they spent draft picks to acquire the #3, and then they spent the #3 by drafting Lance. ALL of those picks were spent on Lance.
Sorry, I didn’t grasp that until after I’d posted.
Okay, I think I understand now, and kind of agree: The argument is that you can either say they traded away the #3 overall, or you can say they traded three 1sts and a 3rd for him, but you can’t say both. Fair enough. So when I said “more than the 3rd overall”, I see now what the correction you posted meant.
With that in mind, I amend it to “more than just a 3rd overall, they actually spent three 1sts and a 3rd.”
EDIT: It didn’t help that I got very stoned shortly before opening this thread.
It’s not just cold numbers, it’s the livelihood of everyone in the organization. Having the dumb luck of getting a Mr Irrelevant that turns into something is just a footnote on a resume. Throwing away a decent chunk of the future for a #3 pick only to give up on him after 6.5 NFL starts is a huge failure.
Hey it’s all good, hope it was good stuff. 
And yeah, you got what I was trying to say. 
It was, not the biggest blunder but a big one.
If Trey doesn’t develop into something that gets the 49ers something (either turning into a good starter or being a valuable trade item) he’s a bust for sure.
It also gets confusing when future picks are involved, because they get more valuable the closer you are to the draft (I.e. a 2023 1st rounder is worth a lot more than a 2026 1st rounder).
@Loach I think you’re using the wrong filter on Lance. If the 49ers trade him now it’s not because they’ve given up on him or he’s a bust. They didn’t “waste” that draft capital. They simply stumbled into a younger, cheaper QB that they like better. Trading Lance now is not giving him away, trading him now is their last opportunity to get close to the same value they spent in 2021 to acquire him.
However, if they decide to stick with Lance and have 2 young QBs on the roster after Purdy is healthy, that will eventually mean that one of either Lance or Purdy’s value gets diminished. Probably Lance’s. His value will deteriorate every time he has a bad game, takes another injury or if he can’t win the starting job. Similarly if Lance goes out there and starts the season gangbusters and wins the starting job, Purdy’s value gets ruined. If when Purdy comes back and isn’t given the starting job that means either his elbow is never going to be 100% again, or the missed time caused him to regress, or this season was a Nick Foles-like fluke.
The 49ers have a choice. They can decide that the QB position is crucial enough that having 2 QBs on rookie deals plus a veteran backup is a good investment, and they stand pat. They forget about what they spent on Lance and decide that’s a sunk cost and that even if Lance remains a career backup it it what it is. OR, they can make the decision now that either Purdy or Lance are the guy for the long term. They commit 100% to that player and trade the other guy at his peak value to best monetize that player. These two players value will never be higher than today, and if Lance is a bust and Purdy was a one-hit wonder they will have lost it all. Trading one now is a hedge. Keeping both is going all-in.
That is true because of the uncertainty involved with future picks. You know where you are going to be in the draft order in 2023 and who will be in the draft. You have no idea what you’re going to get in 2026. And, of course, there’s also the fact that a 2023 pick can fill a hole you have now.
Some very solid points there.
I think my point was misunderstood. If they give up on Lance and pencil him in as a backup it’s a failure. If they can trade him and get good value it’s not a failure. I mentioned very far back that I think it will be hard to trade him except at a huge discount. He has only played in a few games but he hasn’t been spectacular in those games so teams aren’t scrambling for him. He has a big rookie first round contract that would be a decent cap hit for any team. Giving him away for a couple of low round picks is a failure.
This sounds like a waste of money to me.
They’re paying him $375 million? I’m not much of a sports fan but even I know that just because he succeeded as a quarterback doesn’t mean that he knows anything about being on-air talent.
He was fine. But that’s the problem. Even if he was great, he almost certainly isn’t worth the money. Which I find oddly satisfying, considering that statement would never have been true while he was still playing.
How many extra viewers are they really going to get because of him? Certainly not enough to justify the expense. I’m not going to watch those games because of Tom Brady. I’m going to watch them because the late afternoon slot doesn’t have a lot of competition, and I watch a lot of football. You could put a literal duck in the booth that quacked at random intervals, and I’d have the game on. I’d just mute it.
I watched the other afternoon game just so I wouldn’t have to listen to Brady.
Only the one option over here, so not a lot of competition.
Yes. Brady mostly proved that Tony Romo (at least in his first couple of years) was uniquely talented as a color commentator with his ability to predict the upcoming play. The play-by-play guy kept throwing to him, but Tom only had what I thought was deep-ish insights 10% of the time or so.
37 million for a broadcaster is insane. How could anyone possibly justify that money? Pick literally any person in the world and tell me more than maybe a few thousand people are going to tune in to a sports broadcast they wouldn’t otherwise by interested in (ignoring maybe once or twice for the novelty if you made a bizarre pick). I don’t know how they possibly think they could get a return on that.
Not one tenth as insane as 375 million!
It’s a 10 year deal, so I meant to say 37.5 million annually. I just don’t see a path to a return there.
Sort of speaking of Romo, I have this theory that the NFL told him to dumb down his commentary. He was so refreshing and insightful and interesting during his first year of commentary it really stood out how different he was from all the other commentators. And either the dumbass NFL fanbase as a whole gave the NFL negative feedback about this, or they were embarrassed by how much it made their other commentators look like they had no meaningful insight, but either way Romo dumbed it down and became much more cliche and normal as an announcer from year 2 onward. If I’m right, I wonder if they told Brady not to actually bring any real knowledge or insight to his commentary.
I think he was average at best. I’d have rather listened to Troy Aikman or Tony Romo, and not just because I’m a Cowboys fan.
ETA. In terms of watching a game just because of who’s announcing it, Brady won’t help. There’s only one commentator who would get me to do that, the late John Madden.