San Francisco 49ers: 10 worst NFL Draft picks of the decade

The San Francisco 49ers have enjoyed a number of great NFL Draft picks between 2010 and 2019. But with the decade coming to a close, there are also some bad, bad picks in the foray, too. Niner Noise looks at the 10 worst.

One of the best things about hindsight being 20/20 is evaluating the past is immensely easier than it is to evaluate something in the moment. That’s exactly what we intend to do when we evaluate the worst NFL Draft picks of the decade for the San Francisco 49ers.

What constitutes a terrible draft pick? For one, a player who takes zero snaps or starts zero games with the team they were drafted by is a terrible pick. If a player severely underperforms during their tenure, terrible pick. If the team moved multiple assets to acquire a player in the draft only for them to be a bust, that’s a terrible pick.

And if the level of performance on the field far is far outweighed by the level of expectations, that’s a terrible pick, too.

So without further ado, here are San Francisco’s 10 worst draft picks of the decade, as told by Niner Noise.

No. 10: Wide Receiver DeAndre Smelter, Round 4, 2015 NFL Draft

The 49ers have never really had great luck drafting receivers, and wide receiver DeAndre Smelter out of Georgia Tech did not change that perception. Smelter had a single catch for the 49ers for 23 yards and that was it. The young pass catcher redshirted his rookie season, started 2016 on the team’s practice squad and bounced around the league before being out of it in 2019.

Smelter was one of those famous injury-project picks from former general manager Trent Baalke. The wide receiver was coming off of an ACL injury that cut his senior season short, and he just never quite recovered.

Shoutout to Baalke for the project picks. Smelter isn’t the only such kind on this list.