10 players 49ers sorely wish they drafted in 2022 but didn’t
By Peter Panacy
Offensive Line. Jacksonville Jaguars. Luke Fortner. 65. player. 52.
49ers missed-opportunity No. 2: Offensive lineman Luke Fortner, Kentucky
Sticking with the interior-offensive line theme here, and highlighting it with the fact San Francisco spent two day-three picks on linemen anyway, it would have been a great contingency plan for the 49ers if they had been able to land Kentucky interior lineman Luke Fortner if Dylan Parham had been grabbed a bit too early for one of their two picks in Round 3 of the draft.
What was interesting, though, is Fortner actually went earlier than Parham, selected at No. 65 overall by the Jacksonville Jaguars.
At best, Fortner probably projected himself to be a late Round 3 selection, whereas Parham wouldn’t have been too big a reach in the second round. Either way, one might have assumed both zone-style linemen would have been relatively high on Kyle Shanahan’s radar.
Leave it to the Jags, though. They thwarted half of the Niners’ possible plans to land one of these two possible replacements for Alex Mack, while the Raiders removed the other.