The 49ers’ third pick, running back Kaelon Black, was determined to follow Curt Cignetti — one of college football’s most intense coaches (and certainly its most successful over the past two seasons) — from James Madison to Indiana. Black led the Hoosiers in rushing touchdowns and earned rave reviews from all corners of the 2025 national champions' facility.
“You know, people there just talk about him as one of their favorite kids in the program,” 49ers general manager John Lynch said this weekend of Black. “A lot of that comes from the school, from the strength coach, from the offensive coordinator — and then you turn on the film. We really feel like he can help us in a big way.”
The 49ers picked Stribling, Height, and Black on Friday before rounding out their eight-player draft — which featured five trades that also yielded the 49ers a 2027 sixth-round pick — with five more selections on Saturday. They believe the workmanlike theme established by the initial trio of picks carried over into Saturday’s batch, which covered the fourth and fifth rounds.
There might be an even more visible thematic unifier across all eight selections: Athleticism. The 49ers, who were one of the NFL’s slowest teams in 2025, clearly focused on objective measurements of agility, speed, and explosiveness as they strove to navigate the subjective world of draft decisions.
This was the 49ers’ 10th draft with Lynch and coach Kyle Shanahan at the helm. It was the first one that featured good Relative Athletic Scores, all pasted in the composite above, across the entire board of selections.
And the 49ers believe that their picks all successfully pair that plus-athleticism with pro-ready personalities.
“The longer you do it, the more you look at the data,” Lynch said. “The NFL is hard. It’s tough. It’s long. It’s tiresome. You’re going to be challenged. Who has the mental fortitude, the mental toughness to fight through that?”
The 49ers are enamored of 293-pound Oklahoma defensive tackle Gracen Halton, their fourth-round pick at No. 107, whose 36.5-inch vertical leap at the NFL scouting combine was the third best in league history.
Brugler wrote that Halton, one of college football’s most productive interior pass rushers with a 13% pressure rate in 2025, “closes like a banshee when he has a clear lane to the football”.
“He’s an extremely explosive player,” Lynch said of Halton. “The vertical jump translates to the film you watch — boom, he’s off the ball, he’s in the opposing team’s backfield. That’s who we want to be.”
The 49ers began an extensive renovation of their defensive line in 2025, drafting run stoppers Mykel Williams, Alfred Collins, and CJ West. Height and Halton represent the flip side of that coin; both were highly productive pass rushers in college. As a bonus, Halton — per ESPN — led the FBS with a 9.9% run-stop rate for Oklahoma last season.
“We were surprised he was still available [at No. 107],” Lynch said.
The 49ers finished off the fourth round by leaning into one of their strongest college connections on the West Coast. That’s the University of Washington’s Jedd Fisch, who coached consecutive 49ers’ selections — offensive lineman Carver Willis at No. 127 and cornerback Ephesians Prysock at No. 139 — with the Huskies.
Willis played tackle in college, but the 49ers see him as an NFL interior lineman. The 303-pounder will immediately enter the team’s wide-open competition at left guard, satisfying a stated pre-draft goal of both Lynch and Shanahan. Willis allowed only three sacks on 658 pass-rush snaps over his past two college seasons. There’s a chance that the 49ers groom Willis into their center of the future; starter Jake Brendel will be 34 this season and is entering the final year of his contract.
The 6-foot-3 Prysock is physically reminiscent of what had been a bygone 49ers’ cornerback prototype. Early in Lynch and Shanahan’s tenure, the team featured corners Richard Sherman and Ahkello Witherspoon, both 6-foot-3. Time can be a flat circle; although new defensive coordinator Raheem Morris plans to evolve the secondary as he takes over for original Shanahan DC Robert Saleh, Prysock has a chance to bring back an early-day, press-heavy vibe to the position with his rare size and speed (4.45 40-yard dash) combination.
“For a bigger guy, he moves like a guy who’s smaller,” 49ers director of scouting and football operations Josh Williams said of Prysock.
Morris’ influence might be end up being even more visible through the 49ers’ next pick, inside linebacker Jaden Dugger. At 6-foot-4, 242 pounds and with the background of having played both safety and outside linebacker, Dugger has one of the more unique physical profiles of this draft. He’s built rather similarly to 49ers’ superstar Fred Warner, who also played some defensive back in college.
“He’s a tremendous athlete,” 49ers vice president of player personnel Tariq Ahmad said of Dugger, who might fit the roving archetype of versatile back-seven defenders previously coached by Morris. “We see him as a stack linebacker. As you can tell from his measurements, he’s one of the more physically gifted people.”
The 49ers finished their draft without straying from theme, picking Kansas offensive tackle Enrique Cruz Jr. — the fastest offensive lineman in this draft class. Like Halton, Cruz also boasts the second-highest vertical jump (35 inches) at his position.
Cruz has only one season of solid starting college ball under his belt — he was benched at Syracuse prior to transferring to Kansas in 2025. But it was a promising one that, combined with his superb metrics, has the 49ers believing that they at least have a developmental swing tackle in the building.
It’s necessary to stockpile promising lottery tickets because the team’s current stalwarts won’t be around forever. The 49ers’ offense is the league’s oldest unit, and star left tackle Trent Williams will be 38 in July. A large-scale renovation on that side of the ball is undoubtedly coming soon.
In fact, with this draft class full of spry talent, it’s safe to say that the remodeling has already begun.
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