SANTA CLARA – Of the 31 destinations quarterback Trey Lance could have been sent to, Dallas would have been at the bottom of the 49ers’ list.
But there, last Friday, the team traded Lance for a fourth-round draft pick.
General manager John Lynch, appearing on KNBR’s “Murph & Mac Show” Thursday morning, said he had no choice but to get the best compensation for the player the 49ers selected with the No. 3 pick in the 2021 draft .
“As they say, ‘The tie is decided by the runner,'” Lynch said. “The tie would have gone to someone else, but it wasn’t a tie.”
In other words, Dallas owner Jerry Jones made an offer that was significantly better than what other teams were willing to give up for Lance.
“At the end there were a few teams left and I told the other teams, ‘I don’t want him to go there (Dallas),'” Lynch said. “But you know, that’s where he ended up.”
A week earlier, Lynch said he thought it was the “most likely” scenario that Lance would remain with the 49ers. Lynch said that changed in a short amount of time as trade talks became more heated and the final preseason game approached.
“That was the most likely scenario because we had started discussions with the teams and there was nothing that would have made us move him,” Lynch said. “And over the next 24 hours, things changed.”
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