SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Four years after his dismissal as San Francisco 49ers general manager, Trent Baalke indirectly helped his former team land the quarterback who led them to last season's NFC Championship Game.
On March 24, 2021, Baalke, now general manager of the Jacksonville Jaguars, signed then-Niners quarterback C.J. Beathard to a two-year, $5 million contract. It was a move quickly forgotten in San Francisco, where the Niners were two days away from making their biggest, boldest NFL draft move of the Kyle Shanahan/John Lynch era, trading up for the No. 3 pick that would be used on Trey Lance.
Little more than 13 months later, Beathard's departure resulted in the addition of the quarterback who has nudged his way past Lance and into the role of the Niners' presumptive starter: Brock Purdy. The Niners selected Purdy with the 262nd selection in 2022, a compensatory choice they received because Beathard signed a deal just large enough to garner San Francisco the last pick in the draft.
Each spring, the NFL's management council awards compensatory selections at the end of rounds three through seven to teams who lose more or better compensatory free agents in the previous offseason. No team can receive more than four compensatory picks for free agents lost but can get more special compensatory selections awarded via the NFL's initiative for organizations developing minority candidates who become head coaches or general managers with other teams.
For many NFL teams, compensatory picks are viewed as a bonus, a sort of tacit recognition that they lost a player good enough to land a sizable deal elsewhere. For the Niners, who have built one of the league's best and deepest rosters, compensatory choices have graduated to a pillar of their roster-building philosophy.
"You have to have the patience and the vision to allow some of these guys to walk, get some comp picks as a result and to kind of play that game," Lynch said. "It took Kyle and I a little while to figure that one out, but I think we've tried to understand that you can't just go full throttle and you get some rewards if you have a little more discipline. That's never easy, but it is necessary."
Since the compensatory formula was installed in 1994, the Baltimore Ravens have accumulated a league-leading 55 picks for players lost, but the 49ers are quickly rising up the list, as their 39 rank sixth. Recent compensatory wins include Purdy and Pro Bowl safety Talanoa Hufanga, whom the Niners picked in the fifth round in 2021.
But the compensatory equation changed significantly in 2020, when the NFL installed the minority hiring initiative known as Resolution JC-2A. Since the first hiring cycle that followed, the 49ers have lost general managers Martin Mayhew (Washington Commanders) and Ran Carthon (Tennessee Titans) and head coaches Robert Saleh (New York Jets), Mike McDaniel (Miami Dolphins) and DeMeco Ryans (Houston Texans). A team can earn a maximum of three additional third-round comp picks in a given year via this avenue for a maximum of seven total compensatory choices.
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What has followed is the Niners stockpiling compensatory selections at the highest rate in the league. They've received a total of six third-round comp picks as a result of JC-2A and had a league-high 12 compensatory picks over the past two seasons. And with so many of their former employees now occupying coach and general manager jobs around the league, the Niners also face the reality that more teams have high-level decision-makers who covet their players on the free agent market.
"It's very predictable," Lynch said. "We can sit in our free agent meetings and know who's going to like similar players. ... It's not always 100%, but their eyes see what our eyes see and so it's not frustrating. It's part of the deal. ... It's really cool to see all these guys. ... But yes, it does lead to they like a lot of the same players we do."
Never was that more evident than this offseason. The Carthon-led Titans signed former Niners linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair and offensive lineman Daniel Brunskill, a duo that started a combined 73 games since 2019. They also added defensive lineman Arden Key, who played for San Francisco in 2021. When free agency opened, the Ryans-led Texans moved swiftly to sign former Niners safety Jimmie Ward and defensive tackle Hassan Ridgeway, both of whom played with the Niners in 2022.
As Ryans and Carthon are quick to point out, they didn't simply walk into their new jobs and demand that their teams sign their former players. But because of their previous relationships, they were able to add further insight into how those players might fit.
For Carthon, it meant adding context into how players might fit into the culture coach Mike Vrabel has already established.
"It's about guys that fit us," Carthon said. "Are they our kind of people? I can vouch for Arden, Azeez and Dan and say that these are Titans players."
For Ryans, it meant offering examples of how Ward and Ridgeway can help establish the culture the Texans are trying to build.
"That's the biggest thing," Ryans said. "You want great players of course, but they gotta be the right guys and they have to be made of the right stuff. You are going to want guys who come from winning programs so you can establish a winning program ...
"Like you want guys who know what it looks like, know what winning a winning culture, you know, how we practice, how you seen it, how they meet, the attention and detail. ... We know a lot of us came from the same tree there in San Francisco and a lot of us have seen it work. ... So, we are all kind of searching for the same type of players."
On the surface, losing so many key players to teams with former 49ers making decisions might seem like a double-edged sword, but it's a way for San Francisco to double dip into the free agent compensatory formula. While compensatory picks for the 2024 NFL draft won't be announced until next March, the Niners are already projected to get the maximum of four for free agents lost and another for the departure of Carthon and Ryans.
Being able to count on those additional picks has opened San Francisco's eyes to the possibilities of other significant moves, such as last year's trade for running back Christian McCaffrey. The Niners gave up second-, third- and fourth-round picks this year and a 2024 fifth-round pick for McCaffrey in no small part because they knew they were about to get a whopping seven compensatory choices in 2023, including three in the third round.
"There's always somebody that's going to be available at some point in the season," 49ers CEO Jed York said. "I don't know that we were looking for a running back, but when that opportunity came up last year, we had some ammunition and we thought, 'Let's go for it.' ... You have to be prepared to be able to make those decisions. And when you have a few extra third-round picks or fourth-round picks, it makes it a lot easier to make those types of trades."