This is a critical year for John Lynch.
He's entering his ninth season as the 49ers general manager and the team is coming off a 6-11 year in which they missed the playoffs. Recently, they let nine starters leave in free agency while they took on more than $80 million in dead cap penalties -- tops in the NFL this year. So they don't exactly seem like Super Bowl contenders right now.
And that's OK. The organization knows it's going through a roster reset. If they make the playoffs, they probably will be happy. But if they miss the playoffs for the second year in a row, NFL.com Insider Gregg Rosenthal wonders if Lynch's job will be in jeopardy.
"This is absolutely a transition year, and John Lynch has to earn that money," Rosenthal said during a segment with Mina Kimes and Daniel Jeremiah on The NFL Network. "He has done such a great job over the years, but you do wonder if they have another bad year. This has been an arranged marriage between him and Kyle Shanahan for a long time. Do they stay together forever? He has almost talked about wanting to move on."
When Rosenthal finished speaking, Kimes made the point that the 49ers roster is decimated largely because they spent three first-round picks and a third on Trey Lance and got nothing for him. Which means if the 49ers were to fire Lynch, they might fire him because of that trade from four years ago.
Rosenthall and Kimes make good points, but they don't know for sure than Lynch was the one who wanted to trade up for a quarterback in the first place -- that could have been Kyle Shanahan. Nor do they know if Lynch was the one who wanted to take Trey Lance -- that could have been the owners.
I have a hard time seeing the 49ers ever firing Lynch. He might walk away from the job one day, but that would be his decision, not the 49ers' decision.
