The San Francisco 49ers are one of the NFL's premier teams because of their innate ability to draft and develop talented players. General manager John Lynch and head coach Kyle Shanahan have seemingly seen eye-to-eye since they arrived in 2017, which has kept the pipeline flowing.
Late-round selections like George Kittle, Brock Purdy and Dre Greenlaw are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of Day 3 draft steals, and the regime has mainly hit on early-round talent as well.
Lynch and Shanahan are not perfect, however. There is one draft blunder that the 49ers made back in 2021 that is still being held over their heads more than four years later, and surprisingly, it is not Trey Lance.
49ers passed on Chuba Hubbard for Trey Sermon in 2021 NFL Draft
With the No. 88 overall pick in the third round of that draft, the 49ers selected running back Trey Sermon. Obviously, his tenure with the team was short-lived, but swinging and missing on a third-round running back is not necessarily an indictment of their talent evaluation.
Their choosing Sermon over now-Panthers star running back Chuba Hubbard is, however. Hubbard was taken just a round later, as was current Patriots running back Rhamondre Stevenson. Bleacher Report's Damian Parson recently highlighted why Hubbard, in particular, was a steal in that draft.
"In his first two NFL seasons, Hubbard ran for less than 1,100 total yards with seven touchdowns. Since then, he has carved out a legitimate role for the Panthers as the engine to their offense," Parson wrote. "Hubbard did not receive enough touches early in his career to prove himself as a difference maker, but he stayed the course. After surviving different coaching staffs, offensive line combinations and quarterbacks, Hubbard signed a four-year, $33.2 million extension with the Panthers this past November."
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Sermon only played nine games with the 49ers and mustered 147 rushing yards before being waived after his rookie season. He is yet to find his footing anywhere in the NFL, so this feels like a wasted pick by San Francisco.
Hubbard, by contrast, has recorded 2,097 rushing yards and 15 touchdowns over the last two seasons, as well as 404 receiving yards and a touchdown through the air. The reason for Hubbard's late emergence, however, is due to the fact that Christian McCaffrey was on the roster in Carolina.
This makes the passing of Hubbard far more palatable because the team might not have traded for McCaffrey if they felt that they had a strong solution in-house. In fact, it may have been Hubbard's prowess in Carolina that made McCaffrey expendable to the Panthers in the first place.
While, on the surface, the 49ers deserve to be dragged in a sense for taking Sermon over a handful of more talented running backs, things may have actually worked out better for the Red and Gold. Now, McCaffrey needs to remain healthy to further prove this sentiment.
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