49ers quarterback pick: Kyle Shanahan can learn from Andy Reid

With the 49ers ‘reportedly’ deciding between Mac Jones, Trey Lance and Justin Fields, head coach Kyle Shanahan can learn from Chiefs head coach Andy Reid on the selection.

If you’re like most of us, you’re probably sick of all the speculation surrounding the San Francisco 49ers‘ options with the No. 3 overall pick in the 2021 NFL Draft.

Will the pick be used on Alabama quarterback Mac Jones, a prospect viewed as a natural fit within head coach Kyle Shanahan’s offense? Or will the Niners go with the playmaking upside from quarterbacks like Ohio State’s Justin Fields or North Dakota State’s Trey Lance?

Many, like Good Morning Football’s Peter Schrager, are still sold on the idea the pick will be Jones, particularly when factoring in the kind of quarterbacks Shanahan has deployed in recent years:

Reasonable, yes. Shanahan has found success with pocket-type quarterbacks like Matt Schaub, Matt Ryan and San Francisco’s own, Jimmy Garoppolo.

So, while the league has long since been trending towards more mobile, athletic and playmaking quarterbacks and away from traditional pocket passers, it makes sense why someone like Schrager would subscribe to the idea Shanahan would spit in the proverbial face of this movement by grabbing someone of Jones’ ilk.

Yet Shanahan doesn’t have to stay locked in on what’s worked for him in the past. And all he needs to do is look at what another head coach, the Kansas City Chiefs’ Andy Reid, the one who beat his squad in Super Bowl LIV, did back in 2017.

Kyle Shanahan, 49ers won’t need to alter their offense, just like Andy Reid didn’t alter his after drafting Patrick Mahomes

There are far too many connections between the Chiefs’ 2017 NFL Draft addition of quarterback Patrick Mahomes and the 49ers.

For starters, the Niners passing on Mahomes at No. 3 overall, only to see Kansas City move up to No. 10 overall to grab him despite already having a quality starting-caliber option on its roster, Alex Smith.

Smith, entering 2017, wasn’t mobile and never quite the kind of playmaking threat Mahomes would eventually become. The “game manager” moniker was safely put on Smith, and he was more than effective at it, too, helping the Chiefs win 10 games the same year Mahomes was selected.

If Reid was married to the idea his next quarterback had to be of Smith’s liking, he wouldn’t have targeted Mahomes, who was viewed much more as a thrower rather than a natural pocket passer out of Texas Tech. Yet Reid and the Chiefs had the luxury of sitting Mahomes for a year behind Smith, letting the former develop while increasing Smith’s own trade value.

San Francisco appears destined to try the same thing in 2021: draft a rookie quarterback while hoping Garoppolo, assuming he stays and the 49ers want to keep him, gets one last shot to up his open-market value this season. Doing so would benefit Shanahan and the Niners, too, provided they’re able to get something of substance in return next year.

Yet to think a Garoppolo-, Schaub- or Ryan-like clone is exactly what Shanahan wants, solely based on a player like Jones being a perfect “fit” for the head coach’s offense, is folly.

Reid’s drafting and development of Mahomes turned the Chiefs from a perennial playoff contender into a perennial Super Bowl contender with one Lombardi Trophy already in hand. Right now, even with Garoppolo and potentially even with Jones, San Francisco would still regularly be in the playoff discussion, yes.

But it’s the playmaking upsides from prospects like Fields or even Lance that should convince Shanahan he needs to go bold.

Reid proved it can be a successful approach, and Shanahan could simply look at that kind of success and hope to replicate it while making up for the 2017 gaffe of passing on Mahomes in the first place.