Mykel Williams, DE, Georgia was selected 11th overall by the San Francisco 49ers during the first round of the 2025 NFL Draft at Lambeau Field on April 24, 2025 in Green Bay, Wisconsin. | Mark Hoffman / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images It’s time to reflect on the San Francisco 49ers’ previous drafts again. Thanks to YouTube poster and 49ers fan Marvin49, we have videos of each draft. We’ll look at every year during the Kyle Shanahan era up to 2025.

Today, it’s 2025.Being one year removed from the 2025 draft means we can’t draw any major conclusions about whether this class will work out and usher in a new generation or be a massive disappointment. The good news is that this class had one of the better scenarios you could ask for. The 49ers have 11 picks here, and many of them produced at some point in the season.

This will be a long one: As it commonly happens, injuries took their toll on the 2024 San Francisco 49ers. This led to them having the 11th pick in the 2025 NFL Draft. The 2024 season itself was rather disappointing, since the team that had gotten them to the Super Bowl the previous year was in their “last dance,” so to speak, and many thought they could make it back.

That didn’t happen. Key players went down with injuries game after game, and as the weeks went by, the 49ers clearly just wanted to get through the season without further disaster than what they were already dealing with. This team, the “Frustrating Disappointment,” as I called it (due to how much better that team should have been), had more than just injury problems.

Realizing Steve Wilks wasn’t the answer, the 49ers went to Nick Sorensen as defensive coordinator. This proved to be even more of a disaster, as Sorensen had more head-scratching calls than Wilks. Injuries impacted the team, sure, but the 49ers also just couldn’t get out of their own way, committing penalties at the absolute worst times, or calling a terrible coverage and letting quarterbacks strut into the endzone from 20 yards.So that’s how we got here.

Before we discussed what happened on Draft Day, it’s important to note the season these youngsters would be in. See, the injuries weren’t much better in 2025. This wound up being a good thing in some ways.

With many starters getting knocked out of games (or full seasons), this opened the door for the 2025 draft class (and the previous one) to get some playing time. Not only that, but the 12-5 season notched the 49ers a playoff berth. They would go on to win the wild card round against the Philadelphia Eagles.

So a team running out of bodies, staying competitive, AND getting both this and last year’s draft classes playoff experience, along with a win? That is invaluable.The injuries were frustrating, but if there’s any silver lining, it gave these guys playing time and situations they might not otherwise be in. Unfortunately, this would not benefit all the picks, as the injury bug also derailed their rookie seasons—or they simply couldn’t take advantage of their opportunity.

Which brings us to the first pick: The 49ers began things by taking Georgia defensive end Mykel Williams. Williams had the right attitude, a decent resume (40 games, 67 tackles, 14 sacks, three forced fumbles, and a fumble recovery), and played through a grade 2 high ankle sprain. If you can’t figure out the injury issue, at least have players who can play through it, I suppose.

Williams was an upgrade to a very bad 49ers run defense and was speculated to have a role similar to that of former defensive lineman Arik Armstead; Williams was seen as someone who could move around the line based on what offenses were showing. There were rookie mistakes, but you saw improvement every week. That is, until he tore his ACL in November.

The 49ers’ first-round pick, on his own after Nick Bosa suffered the same injury a month or so earlier, was on the shelf.Texas defensive tackle Alfred Collins went in the second round, and boy, did he show something. The guy isn’t a completed project either— and he knows it. Collins started just one game, but was in 16.

He finished with one sack, 17 tackles, and two fumbles. Oh, and two fumble recoveries. One of those fumbles that he recovered is probably the play that defines his rookie season: the Rams fumble force and recovery.

On the goalline facing the Los Angeles Rams in Los Angeles, Collins punched a ball out and saved the 49ers from certain doom. If he is still working on things, we can enjoy where this is headed.The first third-round pick was Oklahoma State linebacker Nick Martin. With a vacancy after Dre Greenlaw departed in free agency and Fred Warner going down early in the season with a foot injury, it seemed like Martin might get some playing time.

That didn’t happen. Martin saw some playing time, but it wasn’t anything to indicate improvement. If there was any development, it wasn’t going to be seen in 2025, as the 49ers placed him on season-ending injured reserve after a concussion.