The San Francisco 49ers made the biggest trade of the 2022 season — and the biggest trade since Tyreek Hill became a Miami Dolphin last spring — when they traded for Carolina Panthers running back Christian McCaffrey. It’s a calculated risk for Niners general manager John Lynch to take. He’s getting an All-Pro runner and receiver to add to an already loaded stable of playmakers. He’ll also inherit an expensive contract that pays a player who only played 10 games in 2020 and 2021 $19 million annually.
Lynch didn’t give up his 2023 first round draft pick to land McCaffrey. That doesn’t mean he landed the 2019 total yardage leader at a bargain price. Here’s what San Francisco sent back to Carolina for its biggest star:
- a 2023 2nd round pick
- a 2023 3rd round pick
- a 2023 4th round pick
- a 2024 5th round pick
Rather than one crack at a Day 1 draft selection, the Panthers opted for a more Bill Belichick-ian shotgun approach to the middle rounds where players sign less expensive contracts. This will help boost the overall level of talent for a rebuilding team saddled with more than $28 million in dead salary cap space from McCaffrey and Robbie Anderson’s contracts alone in 2023. Per Over the Cap, Carolina only has an estimated $1.7 million in spending room for next offseason, seventh-least in the NFL.
The Panthers need young, inexpensive talent, and fast. Using different draft pick value charts we can translate that quantity of future picks into quality. Assuming the 49ers end up with what would be the 25th pick in each of the following two NFL Drafts, here’s how Carolina’s haul would pan out.
Jimmy Johnson’s NFL Draft Trade Value Chart: 590.4 points, equal to the value of the 32nd overall pick.
Rich Hill’s NFL Draft Trade Value Chart: 401 points, equal to the value of the eighth overall pick.
Fitzgerald-Spielberger NFL Draft Trade Value Chart: 2,697 points, equal to the value of the second overall pick.
That’s some pretty dramatic variance, but all three models peg Carolina’s return as at least a first round pick and possibly as valuable as a top 10 selection. The question now is what the franchise will do with them. General manager Scott Fitterer has two drafts under his belts and has selected the following players in rounds two through five:
- WR Terrace Marshall Jr.
- OL Brady Christensen
- TE Tommy Tremble
- RB Chuba Hubbard
- DT Daviyon Nixon
- DB Keith Taylor
- QB Matt Corral
- LB Brandon Smith
OK, that’s … not great. Christiansen is currently an average to below-average starter at guard but growing. Hubbard will compete for snaps at RB1 with McCaffrey gone. Tremble has 25 catches in 22 games and Marshall has 21 in 16. It’s obviously too early to cast judgment over this group — especially since they were playing under a since-exiled head coach. Still, there’s going to be a ton of pressure on Fitterer to produce next April.
What should an extra second, third, fourth and fifth round pick get the Panthers? Let’s take a look at all the players drafted in those rounds between 2010 and 2019. We’ll set the bar for “useful starter” at 48 games started in their NFL career. It’s not a perfect metric — it’s definitely unfair to the guy drafted later in the decade — but it works for a simple calculation like this.
- 140 of the 317 second round picks started at least 48 games (44.2 percent)
- 100 of 357 third round picks (a higher number thanks to compensatory selections, 28 percent)
- 61 of 371 fourth round picks (16.4 percent)
- and 52 of 366 fifth round picks (14.2 percent)
Those aren’t terrible odds, especially when you consider first rounders only had a 65.8 percent chance of hitting that metric. Carolina may be less likely to find a star, but it’s more likely to find starters with smart drafting. That’s the exact decision the team made by dealing McCaffrey. Dealing for multiple picks instead of one marquee selection was a natural extension of that.
Trading a star running back doesn’t fix the Panthers. It does give the team a direction and identity beyond “overwhelmed coach, awful veteran quarterback.” Carolina is laying concrete for what it hopes will be a foundation for success. The next two drafts will show whether or not they can build anything on it.
