The 49ers are doing their due diligence on edge rushers in the 2019 draft. They’ve met with multiple at the combine in Indianapolis, including Florida EDGE Jachai Polite. He was not a huge fan of what turned out to be a pretty tough meeting with the 49ers according to Draft Network’s Trevor Sikkema.
There weren’t any details of the meeting, but Draft Network’s Jon Ledyard followed up and said Polite felt this way about several meetings, but was using it as a learning experience:
Pre-draft meetings are interesting because teams use them in different ways. Sometimes they want to ask real questions, other times they’re trying to see how an interviewee responds to certain situations.
Polite went on to say the Rams were his favorite interview because they weren’t as negative toward him.
It’ll be interesting to see if his reaction to criticism in meetings affects his draft stock at all. Most mock drafts have him going between Nos. 15 and 25. The Florida edge rusher is a bit undersized, but had a very productive junior year for the Gators with 11 sacks and 19.5 tackles for loss.
He was a player we tagged as a candidate for the 49ers to chase in a trade back up into the late first round. After his meeting and his response to it, that seems less likely,
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