2022 Senior Bowl: 4 NFL Draft prospects 49ers will love
By Peter Panacy
With the 2022 Reese’s Senior Bowl kicking off this weekend, the 49ers would be wise to absolutely fall in love with these four NFL Draft prospects.
The San Francisco 49ers don’t have a first-round pick in the 2022 NFL Draft.
However, they do own picks on days two and three of the draft, and a would-be trade of quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo this offseason is almost certainly going to add to the capital general manager John Lynch will have at his disposal for the draft later this April.
A big chunk of what the Niners will want to do has to include the annual Reese’s Senior Bowl, and all one needs to do is look back at how head coach Kyle Shanahan fell in love with former South Carolina wide receiver Deebo Samuel ahead of the 2019 draft.
That worked out well enough, right?
Hopefully for San Francisco, there’ll be a few more prospects worth identifying as high-level targets it should pursue heavily if they perform well at the Senior Bowl this season.
Let’s take a look at four such prospects to watch.
49ers Senior Bowl Target No. 4: Wide Receiver Christian Watson, North Dakota State
On the surface, it might not appear as if the 49ers would need another wide receiver. At least not with Samuel in the mix, along with the promising developments of fellow wideouts Brandon Aiyuk and Jauan Jennings.
That said, it’d be hard to turn down a 6-foot-5, 208-pound wideout with excellent speed and ball skills.
Especially if he played with the Niners’ soon-to-be-starting quarterback, Trey Lance, at North Dakota State.
Wide receiver Christian Watson has reportedly been tearing up Senior Bowl practices, and that kind of effort for a potential day-two pick should catch Shanahan’s eyes in spades:
https://twitter.com/jacobinfante24/status/1489325528960188416
This will come after Watson’s 800-yard, seven-touchdown campaign where he displayed the kind of small-school flash that should easily supersede the association of being “only” an FCS prospect.
Getting a big-bodied target with speed could assist Lance in a great way, and Watson has those upside traits that could make him a long-term fit in a dynamic system.