(Photos: 49ers)
The first shoe dropped March 18. The other fell a couple days before the draft, though we didn’t learn of it until Saturday.
Left tackle Joe Staley and defensive tackle DeForest Buckner, arguably the two most respected players on the team when Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch arrived in 2017, are now ex-49ers. The team traded Buckner to Indianapolis in mid-March. And on the final day of the 2020 NFL draft, the Niners announced they were trading for tackle Trent Williams, shortly before they acknowledged Staley is retiring.
The 49ers will move on without them, but will be diminished by their absence. Williams, who is four years younger, may actually be Staley’s superior at this point. And Shanahan and general manager John Lynch believe they have found Buckner’s successor in Javon Kinlaw, drafted with the No. 14 overall pick Thursday. The locker is changed, however, as Shanahan fully admitted Saturday.
“What they’ve meant to me personally in the three years I’ve been here, and how much they’ve helped me as a first-time head coach – starting out 0-9 (in 2017) and being able to get through some of that, going 4-12 my second year as a head coach,” the coach told reporters on a wrap-up Zoom video conference. “When you have guys that are people like Staley, like Buckner, … and those guys believe in you as a coach – if I don’t
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