All 49ers

49ers All-Time Draft Bust Team: Offense

How can you forget these players?

Grant Cohn

April 27, 2012; Santa Clara, CA, USA; San Francisco 49ers head coach Jim Harbaugh and first round
April 27, 2012; Santa Clara, CA, USA; San Francisco 49ers head coach Jim Harbaugh and first round / Kelley L Cox-USA TODAY Sports
In this story:

If you had to make a team full of the biggest draft busts in 49ers franchise history, who would you pick?

Here are my selections. Let's start with the offense.

Quarterback: Jim Druckenmiller | Round 1 | 1997

Trey Lance is a candidate because the 49ers traded three first-round picks for him and then dealt him to Dallas for a fourth-rounder after just four career starts, but we still don't know how Lance will develop. We do know that Druckenmiller is one of the biggest draft busts ever. The 49ers took him with the 26th pick, he started one game and was out of the league in two years. Incredible.

Running Back: Joe Williams | Round 4 | 2017

Retired in college, the 49ers drafted him anyway and he never played a game in the NFL. True story.

Wide Receiver: Rashaun Woods (R1/2004), A.J. Jenkins (R1/2012), Jalen Hurd (R3, 2019)

Woods was the 31st pick, he caught 7 passes as a rookie and never played another season in the NFL. Jenkins was the 30th pick, he caught zero passes for the 49ers, they traded him after one year and he was out of the league after three. Hurd was a third-round pick who was injured when the 49ers drafted him and never played a down in a regular season game.

Tight End: Cameron Latu | Round 3 | 2023

The 49ers drafted him just last year, but he was so bad the 49ers had to shut him down and put him on I.R. That's what they did with Joe Williams his rookie season before releasing him in Year 2. I expect Latu to get released as well.

Offensive Tackle: Kwame Harris (R1/2003) & Mike McGlinchey (R1/2018)

Harris was the 26th pick and we was one of the worst starting offensive tackles in the NFL. McGlinchey was the 9th, and was taken ahead of star players such as Minkah Fitzpatrick, Vita Vea, Derwin James, Frank Ragnow and Lamar Jackson.

Interior O-Line: Marcus Martin (R3/2014), Brandon Thomas (R3/2014) & Joshua Garnett (R1/2016)

Marcus Martin started 24 games for the 49ers and was one of the worst centers in the NFL. Brandon Thomas was injured when he was drafted and never played a game in the NFL. And Garnett was the 28th pick and he started only 11 games in his career.

Stay tuned for the defensive side of the 49ers' all-time draft bust team.

Published |Modified
Grant Cohn
GRANT COHN

Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn's channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers' official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.

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