Want more ways to catch up on the latest in Bay Area sports? Sign up for the Section 415 email newsletter here and subscribe to the “Section 415" podcast wherever you listen.

The 2026 NFL Draft is over, debates rage on, and the 49ers’ rookie minicamp is scheduled for the end of this week. The team’s 90-man roster is also full, setting the table for the organized team activities (OTAs), which will stretch from May to June.

Let’s take inventory with four pillars of thoughts, observations, and predictions springing from the 49ers’ draft.

The 49ers hope that their second fifth-round pick, Enrique Cruz Jr., develops into at least a good swing tackle. But entering the draft, they’d already signed veteran Vederian Lowe for that spot this season. So where might Cruz fit so that he’s not dead developmental weight on the 53-man roster?

Well, consider that Cruz — who ran a 4.94 40-yard dash at the NFL Scouting Combine — is the fastest offensive lineman in the 2026 rookie class.

Combine that knowledge with a fascinating trend that unfolded in the 49ers’ own division: Last season, coach Sean McVay’s Los Angeles Rams used 13-personnel (three tight ends) on 30.5% of offensive plays, the highest rate of the NFL Next Gen Stats era.

Other teams obviously took notice. By midseason, coach Mike McDaniel’s Miami Dolphins had also extensively taken to 13-personnel. Never mind a lack of eligible tight ends on the roster; McDaniel simply used offensive lineman Daniel Brunskill — whom he’d coached earlier this decade with the 49ers — at the position. Brunskill ended up playing 121 snaps at tight end.

“He’s one of the few players in history who can say he’s started an NFL game at six different positions,” McDaniel said after Miami’s experiment began.

Last week, teams combined to draft 21 tight ends — the highest total of the seven-round draft era. Nine of them went in the first three rounds.

The 49ers did not get in on that pick party (although they did sign Penn State tight end Khalil Dinkins in undrafted free agency). That does not, however, mean that the 49ers are ignoring the 13-personnel revolution. Coach Kyle Shanahan undoubtedly recognizes it as a key part of the Rams’ success when it came to moving the ball against the Seattle Seahawks’ vaunted defense in 2025.

This is where Cruz, with exceptional speed and the 49ers’ logjam at offensive tackle, might loom large. Consider a Brunskill-type role at tight end, one that might even change from luxury to necessity if superstar George Kittle isn’t back from his Achilles injury by the opener (he’s shooting to return Week 1, but that’s far from a guarantee).

The 49ers just suffered through their least efficient rushing season under Shanahan and a fix lies in better perimeter blocking that exposes downsized defenses. A creative role for Cruz, especially given the 49ers’ current personnel deficiencies, might make sense.

During an appearance on Rich Eisen’s show, Shanahan said the 49ers entered the draft with two goals. They either wanted to select one of their preferred targets at No. 27 or trade down twice from that position. Since the 49ers had awarded fewer first-round grades than usual this draft, they recognized that the former was unlikely to happen. So they braced for the trade route.

GM John Lynch, anticipating that trading back might be a popular strategy in a thinner draft, agreed to a tentative deal with the Miami Dolphins to shift from No. 27 to No. 30 before the event began. He pulled the trigger on that trade once the 49ers were on the clock and their preferred first-round players were gone.

The 49ers were then willing to select De’Zhaun Stribling at No. 30, but still desired to trade back one more time because their intel suggested that the wide receiver would likely remain unselected until a bit later in the second round. So they swapped No. 30 to the New York Jets for Nos. 33 and 179, a fifth-rounder.

The point calculus of the trade slightly favored the Jets, but a profit was a profit to the 49ers — and New York’s offer was the best and safest one on the table.

Over the 20 hours between Picks 32 and 33, Lynch even debated trading back again, but the 49ers — gathering information that Stribling might be selected before Pick 40 — decided to stay put and make the selection. There are now indications that multiple NFL teams had Stribling ranked much higher than the public draft consensus, which projected the wideout for the third round and has generated a firestorm of debate this past week.

“I got a few texts saying, ‘Man, I can’t believe you took that guy — thought he was going to be here [because we wanted to pick him],’” Shanahan said.

As Day 2 progressed, the 49ers weren’t done trading.

Their first swap down from No. 27 yielded a third-round pick (No. 90, spent on running back Kaelon Black). The move down to No. 33 produced a fifth rounder (No. 179, used on Cruz). A third trade, moving linebacker Dee Winters to the Dallas Cowboys, netted the 49ers a fifth-round pick that they used as part of another trade back, from No. 58 to 70 (used on edge rusher Romello Height), to move into the fourth round (No. 107, spent on defensive tackle Gracen Halton). And finally, the 49ers executed a fifth trade with the Baltimore Ravens that added a 2027 sixth-round pick to their arsenal.

“Which is huge,” Shanahan said, “because we’ll need that next year and it will also be big around the trade deadline.”

A sixth-round pick was certainly valuable at last year’s deadline, as the 49ers sent one to the New England Patriots for defensive end Keion White.

Above all else, the 49ers — who entered this 2026 draft with only six picks — felt that they needed a larger draft class to increase hit probability and ensure salary-cap sustainability over the next half decade. They executed five trades, tied for the most under Shanahan and Lynch (the duo also traded five times during their first draft in 2017), to expand this year’s collection to eight picks.

When the dust settled, the 49ers were one swap short of their legendary 1986 draft, which featured a trendsetting six trades. In his biography on Walsh, titled “The Genius,” David Harris wrote that “come draft day, the second floor at Forty Niners headquarters took on the air of a commodities market.”

For a while, it looked liked the 2026 49ers might replicate that vibe. And if they’d somehow managed to trade Brandon Aiyuk over draft weekend, they would’ve tied Walsh’s record.

All the trades also allowed the 49ers to take a fifth-round flier at No. 154 on Jaden Dugger, one of the most physically intriguing players that the team has drafted in quite some time. Remember that they had entered the draft without a selection beyond the fourth round.

New defensive coordinator Raheem Morris is expected to meet the media for the first time at the team’s rookie minicamp this week. Perhaps he’ll offer some details regarding the planned usage of Dugger, who played safety, edge rusher, and inside linebacker in successive years of college and is as tall as Fred Warner (6-foot-4) but with longer 35-inch arms.

Morris is a coordinator known for adaptability; he’s coached both 3-4 and 4-3 defenses and will integrate some principles of the former into the 49ers’ preexisting setup (Height, for example, will play some outside linebacker on top of his edge-rushing duties). In his previous job with the Atlanta Falcons, Morris deployed youngsters Jalon Walker and Kendal Daniels at multiple positions.

The NFL — as defenses strive to counter adaptable, “position-less” Shanahan-style offenses — is trending in this direction, which is best exemplified by Seattle’s usage of roving defender Nick Emmanwori. Dugger is the type of prospect that may offer the 49ers a chance to do some experimentation of their own.

The most practical way to view an offseason comes through the lens of how a team addresses its biggest weaknesses. For the 49ers, those were a lack of speed on offense (which led to huge separation issues for the second straight season) and the dearth of a pass rush on defense (they finished with a league-low 20 sacks).

Take what the 49ers did to address the speed and separation questions.

They drafted Stribling, who runs a 4.36 40-yard dash, to slot into the “big slot” position previously held by Jauan Jennings — who ran a 4.7. They drafted Black, who runs a 4.43 40 and should immediately plug in behind Christian McCaffrey. They also signed receiver Christian Kirk, whose three fastest GPS tracker speeds last season would’ve been the three fastest recorded marks on the 49ers’ offense.

Also of note: While signee Mike Evans is not a burner, he’s a true “X” receiver — the 49ers have lacked one since Aiyuk went down in 2024 — who should draw safety attention and open up the space necessary for his teammates to showcase their speed.

On the defensive side, the 49ers have responded to their pass-rushing problem (and to the previous year’s issue of horrific run defense) by completely reconstructing their defensive line.

The only member of the 2024 front who’s projected to be part of the 49ers’ season-opening D-line rotation in 2026 is Nick Bosa.

The 49ers spent 2025 cutting veterans who were poor against the run and replacing them with draftees Mykel Williams, Alfred Collins, and CJ West. They then used 2026 on rookie pass rushers, adding Height, Halton, and undrafted free agent Mikail Kamara out of Indiana.

That’s a huge amount of change in just 14 months, and it’s almost certainly the most significant development leaving the 49ers’ 2026 draft.