The NFC appears wide open for next season. There is one main favorite to reach the Super Bowl again in the Philadelphia Eagles, although the San Francisco 49ers are right behind them. That’s part of whytheir NFL Draft was a bit strange.
For the 49ers everything will be about their quarterbacks. Brock Purdy is the clear top option to be the starting signal-caller, but his availability is uncertain because he is coming back from getting surgery in his right elbow.
Their other choices are Trey Lance and Sam Darnold. The question marks are so big around that position that they also signed Brandon Allen. Despite they need all the help they can get from the whole roster for those concerns, the front office decided to take kicker Jake Moody in the third round.
John Lynch opens up on drafting kicker Jake Moody
Every pick in the draft should be valued. The 49ers know that very well since they got a competent quarterback like Purdy as Mr. Irrelevant last year. However, there is no doubt that Top 100 selections are usually more impactful. They felt the need to take a kickerfollowing Robbie Gould’s departure despite they made a trade for his potential replacement, so they went for it in the draft.
San Francisco drafted K Moody out of Michigan with the 99th overall pick. That was even scheduled to be their first selection of the draft, although that wasn’t the case after they traded up to get safety Ji’Ayir Brown at 87. To put things in perspective, Moody was only the sixth kicker to be drafted within the first 100 prospects since 2000.
It was such a rare decision that general manager John Lynch had to provide the reasoning. “I can tell you that a lot of teams have called and said shortly thereafter they were going there. Teams tried to trade up to get in front of us. Time will tell. But we think he has the makings of a real cornerstone, foundational-type player for years to come for us, and we’re proud to have him a part of us”, he said at the Murph & Mac podcast.
Lynch then talked about the impact Moody can have: “I think this guy will give us an opportunity to extend where we’ve been able to kick from. I think we’ll be able to kick the 55-plus yarders now. I think on the kickoffs, this is a guy who can put them into the end zone when we need, kick them out of the end zone. We can hang it up there. I think he affords us the opportunity to do a lot of things”.