The 49ers won’t only acquire the Chiefs’ 2013 second-round pick in the planned trade for quarterback Alex Smith. San Francisco is also set to get a valuable pick next year.
A league source tells PFT’s Mike Florio that the 2014 conditional pick in the trade is the Chiefs’ 2014 third-rounder, which can become a second-rounder if certain benchmarks are met.
So the 49ers are set up to be players on the second day of this year’s draft, and they’ll be players on the second day of next year’s draft, too. It’s an enviable position to be in: San Francisco was already a Super Bowl team with Alex Smith standing on the sideline, and the 49ers will be well positioned to stay at or near the top of the league thanks to the draft picks they acquired for trading Smith.
The Smith trade is the biggest part of the 49ers’ broader strategy of compiling additional draft picks, and that strategy has them very well suited to bolster their roster in April: The 49ers have all their own picks this year, plus the Chiefs’ second-round pick, the Panthers’ third-round pick, the Colts’ fifth-round pick, the Dolphins’ sixth round pick and the Bengals’ seventh round pick. So the 49ers are already picking twice in five of the draft’s seven rounds, and that’s before any compensatory picks they might get.
With a good team in place and a hoard of future draft picks, the 49ers are a franchise in great shape.