49ers Trade Up for the No. 3 Pick in the 2021 NFL Draft

According to Schefter, the 49ers "did not trade up with one quarterback in mind." Apparently, they like more than one player at that spot.

Grant Cohn | Mar 26, 2021

The 49ers just made their most aggressive move in years, maybe decades.

They traded their first-round pick this year, their first-round pick in 2022, their third-round compensatory pick in 2022 and their first-round pick in 2023 to the Miami Dolphins in exchange for the No. 3 pick in the upcoming NFL Draft, according to ESPN's Adam Schefter.

That's three first-round picks plus a third in exchange for the opportunity to draft one franchise player.

According to Schefter, the 49ers "did not trade up with one quarterback in mind." Apparently, they like more than one player at that spot.

But it seems hard to believe the 49ers would trade four assets including three first-round picks for the opportunity to draft an offensive tackle or a wide receiver.

This move indicates the 49ers plan to draft a quarterback with the No. 3 pick, and that Jimmy Garoppolo's time in San Francisco could come to an end soon, or just after the draft.

The 49ers probably won't have an opportunity to draft Trevor Lawrence or Zach Wilson -- most experts expect those two quarterbacks to be the top two picks in the draft. But the 49ers can have their choice of the rest, meaning they could take Mac Jones, Justin Fields or Trey Lance.

Whoever the 49ers take, head coach Kyle Shanahan must really, really like the guy to mortgage so much of the 49ers' future to get him.

Shanahan and Lynch will talk to the media this coming Monday, and they'll explain their vision for this trade.

Stay tuned.

Published Mar 26, 2021

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.