There aren’t that many worlds where the 49ers can salvage the trade up in the draft for quarterback Trey Lance. Safety Malik Mustapha, a fourth-round pick in this year’s draft, gives San Francisco at least a slim chance to do it.
Regardless of the reason the Lance trade didn’t work for the 49ers it’s impossible to call it a success. They dealt three first-round picks and a third-round pick to move up for a player they traded before that player’s third season began. That’s a mess no matter how many ways it gets sliced.
Last year San Francisco sent Lance to the Cowboys in exchange for a fourth-round pick. It was that pick, No. 124 overall, that landed the 49ers Mustapha.
This is their lone path toward salvaging something from the initial Lance deal. Not that they’ve been mired in mediocrity or not having success on the field. They’ve been to at least the NFC championship in every season since the trade, but Mustapha is now the ultimate result of that deal.
While finding quality safety play is imperative in a pass-heavy NFL, finding players specifically like Mustapha who can play in coverage while providing enough thump against the run to stay effective when offenses go bigger is essential.
However, on top of the importance mentioned above, there’s the added layer of softening the blow of the Lance deal. Chances are Mustapha isn’t going to be Ronnie Lott. If he can be a Pro Bowl or All-Pro caliber safety though it would be much easier to erase some of the negative fallout of the Lance deal. The 49ers will never get those first-round picks back and we’ll never know what players they would’ve drafted had they not moved up in the 2021 draft. We also don’t know whether those players would’ve helped them win a Super Bowl. For now the unknown weighs heavily though in the light of two NFC championship game defeats and an overtime loss in the Super Bowl.
Mustapha has a chance to usher in a new era for the 49ers’ defense though. And if he can do that while playing at a high enough level that he helps San Francisco eventually win a sixth Lombardi Trophy, it would undo lot of the weight sitting on the franchise from the 2021 draft gone wrong.
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