The hits just keep on coming for the 49ers. Shortly after learning that defensive end Nick Bosa is done for the year with a torn ACL, the 49ers announced that defensive lineman Solomon Thomas has suffered the same injury. Needless to say, Thomas’ year is over. 
[RELATED: 49ers’ Nick Bosa Done For Season]
Thomas didn’t just go down in the same game — he went down two plays after Bosa. This marks a lost season for the former No. 3 overall pick in the 2017 draft after a string of disappointing campaigns. The Stanford product started at least 12 games in each of his first two seasons but was first string just three times in 2019. After playing on just 41% of the Niners snaps, he turned into more of a role player than the star SF envisioned. This year, he started in both of his games, but he won’t have an opportunity to build off of that.
In 2017, Thomas was widely regarded as the second-best defensive lineman in the class, behind only Myles Garrett. On draft night, the Niners sent their No. 2 overall pick to the Bears and tapped Thomas, even though they already had a loaded defensive front featuring Arik Armstead and DeForest Buckner. With that, the Bears got Mitchell Trubisky and the 49ers got a king’s ransom for sliding down just one spot. Unfortunately, they missed on Thomas. In four seasons (really, three seasons-and-change), Thomas registered six total sacks while starting just 30 games.
In other Niners injury news, the club received good word on quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo. He’s day-to-day with his high-ankle injury, giving him a small chance of playing this week against the Giants and a better chance of returning for Week 4 against the Eagles (Twitter link via NFL.com’s Ian Rapoport). Running back Raheem Mostert, meanwhile, will be out for several weeks with a knee injury.
Passed on McCaffrey, Mahomes, Watson and TJ Watt. Hindsight is always 20/20, but this was a tough draft.
Yeah, hindsight is 20/20, but this is one of those cases like trading up to draft Watkins when you could have stayed put and drafted any of a number of stars. There were just so many better options.
Realistically, I get that Watt wasn’t going that high, and plenty of teams passed on Mahomes and Watson, but if you were going to take a defensive player after Garrett in that draft, lots of people would have said to take Jamal Adams at the time, both in big board rankings and because the 49ers had already spent so much recent draft capital on their D line.
Adams was another guy I forgot to mention. I went back and looked through the draft and some of the players the 49ers passed on and it was a solid group of studs. Although, that was the Kittle draft so it was all worth it. Just sucks to think they could have had one of Adams/Mahomes/Watson/McCaffrey AND Kittle right now. One of those QB’s running Shanahan’s offense would be virtually unstoppable.
Totally. Honestly Watson is the most glaring one. Mahomes worked out better than people could have reasonably predicted, but Watson has had a wonky supporting cast and some bad luck, but he’s still all the good things he was in college.
But yeah, even with the Thomas failures and the Foster disaster, you still make up a lot with a pick like Kittle.