49ers GM John Lynch's dream being realized ahead of Super Bowl weekend
49ers' John Lynch is a win away from Super Bowl title in just third year as an NFL general manager. Credit: Getty Images/Ezra Shaw
MIAMI
This could be quite the weekend for John Lynch.
Not only is the 49ers’ third-year general manager in the Super Bowl for the first time as an NFL executive, but he has a chance to join the rarefied air of the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
The former Bucs and Broncos safety put together an exemplary career as a nine-time Pro Bowl safety and is a Hall of Fame finalist for the seventh straight year. But there’s something more important on his mind at the moment — finding a way for the 49ers to win the Super Bowl for the first time since the 1994 season.
“I think it probably makes it a little easier, because my mind is elsewhere,” Lynch said of not getting too worked up about his Hall of Fame chances. “My mind is on doing anything I can do, and at this point, there’s not a whole lot. But with the Super Bowl, there are so many details that are popping up on just getting to practice and where we’re going and all of that. Just making sure we’re making it as normal as possible for these guys.”
Lynch was an unlikely success story as a player — a third-round pick of the Bucs in 1993 who morphed into one of the league’s preeminent safeties and helped the Bucs win their only Super Bowl, after the 2002 season. He later became a four-time Pro Bowl safety for the Broncos.
Now he’s turning his chance to be a front-office executive without a day’s worth of previous experience into a potential Super Bowl championship.
He formed a unique bond with coach Kyle Shanahan, who got to know Lynch during the former safety’s days as an NFL broadcaster on Fox. And when Shanahan made it known that he was looking for a general manager to join him in San Francisco, Lynch jumped at the chance.
It has taken the two only three years to get to the Super Bowl, a remarkable turnaround that should give all teams in similar rebuilding situations hope for the future. Yes, that means you, Giants and Jets.
The combination of Shanahan’s coaching — he has long been one of the NFL’s most innovative offensive coaches — and Lynch’s team-building moves have set the stage for a potential championship.
Lynch has done an exceptional job of filling the team’s needs, sometimes through the draft and free agency but also through a series of aggressive trades. The biggest deal, of course, was acquiring former Patriots backup quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo before the trade deadline in 2017. The asking price was cheap, with New England acquiring only a second-round pick.
Lynch was stunned that the Patriots would ask so little of a quarterback who might one day replace the great Tom Brady, and Lynch was prepared to offer more to fill his most important need. But no, that’s what New England was asking, and that’s what the teams agreed on.
Garoppolo showed plenty of promise in five starts near the end of the 2017 season but suffered torn knee ligaments in the third game of 2018 — at Kansas City — and missed the rest of the year. He recovered nicely and put together a mostly terrific 2019 season, throwing 27 touchdown passes but also 13 interceptions. The 49ers went 13-3 to earn the No. 1 seed in the NFC and beat the Vikings and Packers to earn a trip to Super Bowl LIV against the Chiefs.
The Garoppolo trade worked out much better than another key decision of the Lynch-Shanahan partnership. Their first-round pick in 2017 was linebacker Reuben Foster, who was arrested twice on domestic violence charges, including once during the 2018 season, after which the charges were dropped. But Lynch and Shanahan agreed that they couldn’t keep Foster on the team despite the team’s investment.
That was a key moment, according to 49ers owner Jed York.
“I don’t know that that would have been the case with every other coach or every other general manager — not just here, but across the league — because it’s hard to give up on talent,” York said. “That, to me, is one of the defining moments of John and Kyle, being able to say, ‘This is a first-round pick, in our first year, and we moved on from it,’ and it was hard, and we could have justified not moving on from it.”
But Lynch found other ways to replenish the talent, especially on defense. He traded for Chiefs pass rusher Dee Ford and acquired linebacker Kwon Alexander. Garoppolo’s knee injury was a big reason the 49ers finished 4-12 last season, but it earned them the second overall pick in 2019, and the net result was huge. They drafted Ohio State defensive end Nick Bosa, who quickly has emerged as one of the league’s best pass rushers.
Shanahan can’t imagine things working out better, thanks in large part to Lynch’s personality.
“Usually people like that just on average . . . the person’s got to be somewhat phony,” Shanahan said. “What’s he really like? No one is really Captain America. But then you get with John day-in and day-out, and that’s genuinely who he is.”
They’re hoping the journey brings them to the NFL’s mountaintop on Super Bowl Sunday.
No better celebration for Lynch, especially if he gets the Hall of Fame call the night before.
Bob Glauber retired in 2022 after covering the NFL for nearly 40 years. He was selected in 2021 for the Bill Nunn Career Achievement Award by the Pro Football Writers of America, and is a three-time winner of the New York State Sportswriter of the Year by the National Sports Media Association. President of the PFWA for the 2018-20 seasons, he is the author of “The Forgotten First” and “Guts and Genius.”
