The San Francisco 49ers raised eyebrows with their first selection of the 2026 NFL Draft, taking wide receiver De'Zhaun Stribling in the second round, with the No. 33 overall pick. Many around the league viewed the move as a reach, but the team valued Stribling far more highly than the public consensus.

Speaking on The Rich Eisen Show, head coach Kyle Shanahan explained that one of his early concerns entering the 2026 NFL Draft was San Francisco's limited draft capital, as the team originally held just six selections. Through a series of trades, including moving back and out of the first round, the 49ers ultimately finished with eight total picks.


"There's a lot of good receivers in the draft," Shanahan said. "We weren't for sure going to go receiver either (with their first pick). We knew we would like to, but there was a lot of positions we would like to, and we targeted everything at 27."

Shanahan noted that the 49ers viewed the second round through the end of the third as the strongest part of the draft. However, San Francisco initially had just one pick in that range after trading its third-rounder for defensive tackle Osa Odighizuwa.

"And so, I was really concerned going into it because I also felt we needed to add more than six players—not necessarily for this year, but also for next year," Shanahan said. "All the stuff's tied together on how many free agents you lose and things like that.

"So I was worried that if we were going to go get players that we were targeting, we were going to end up using some of our fourth-round picks to come up."

Shanahan feared the team might ultimately end up with just four selections when everything was said and done.


Despite those concerns, the 49ers remained patient and avoided sacrificing too many selections. Instead of ending the draft with a small class, San Francisco doubled Shanahan's initial projection by the end of the process.

The 49ers had an idea of who might be available at their initial spot in the first round, and targeted several prospects at their No. 27 draft slot. However, the desire for more selections led the team to take risks, trading back multiple times. The good news is that they still landed one of their priority targets.

"That's kind of what we were hoping for," Shanahan said. "Our first goal was that the guy we wanted would fall to 27, but we got our second goal, and that was to trade back twice, accumulate some more picks, and still get the guy.

"We would have taken Stribling at 30, if we had to pick, but to get to 33 and still get the guy we wanted [was ideal] ... I think we added eight players who all have a very good chance of making our team, and on top of that, we added a sixth-round pick for next year, which I think's huge because we didn't have one."



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