There’s a fine line between thinking outside the box and losing your damn mind. 49ers CEO Jed York thinks he’s fallen on the right side of it.
“Nothing is guaranteed,” York told Peter King of TheMMQB.com in the aftermath of the news that the team had hired broadcaster John Lynch to serve as the team’s General Manager. “But so many opportunities are missed in the NFL because people don’t want to do something different. We’re OK with that, because I am confident in Kyle [Shanahan] and John. John has watched John Elway, and how he’s built a team in Denver. As easy as it is to say he hasn’t built a team yet — I get that — I talk to Kyle, and he says John is the most prepared of all the TV [people] he meets in the production meetings before games. We understand we’ll have to live with growing pains, but I’m willing to do that because I believe the upside with both of them is so great.”
First takeaway: So much for any discretion or finesse regarding the rule that prevents the 49ers from hiring Shanahan before his current employer completes the Super Bowl. If it wasn’t already obvious (and it should have been), Shanahan will be the next coach of the 49ers.
That fact, along with the reality that the 49ers promised Shanahan final say over the roster in order to get the deal done, made Lynch a viable candidate. As previously mentioned in this space 10 days ago, the inability of the team to give final say to the G.M. could force the franchise to shift its focus to people not currently employed with other franchises, since candidates like George Paton of the Vikings or Terry McDonough of the Cardinals could have been blocked if the job didn’t give them control of the roster.
“Folks who would aspire to fill that role may already be contacting Shanahan and/or the 49ers to express interest,” we wrote — and that’s exactly how it went down, based on the ESPN report that Lynch reached out to Shanahan.
So while it was a bold move, it also was a move born in large part of necessity. When candidates for the coaching job began to systematically bow out and Shanahan was able to squeeze favorable terms from the team (including what is expected to be a six-year, $30 million deal and control over the roster), the 49ers had no choice but to go outside the box — the circumstances had yanked them there.
Whether it works remains to be seen. Talk of Lynch’s preparation sounds a lot like the Matt Millen dynamic, who as legend has it had a habit of telling teams during production meetings what they needed to do to improve. The Lions thought it sounded good enough to give him the keys to the franchise.
Lynch doesn’t have the keys to the franchise, but he’s in position to affect it significantly, for better or worse, for the next several years. Whether he goes the way of Elway or Millen remains to be seen.