“We need some players to come out of this draft, because they’re going to be playing next year and into the future.”
-49ers general manager John Lynch on April 22
With that in mind, the San Francisco 49ers used their Day 2 NFL draft picks to get CB Renardo Green out of Florida State in the second round (64) and OL Dominick Puni out of Kansas in the third round (86).
Renardo Green
With Charvarius Ward and Deommodore Lenoir heading into the last year of their contracts, and free-agent signing Isaac Yiadom on a one-year deal, Green will compete for a significant role this season, while providing the 49ers with a corner for the future.
“I can personally play all three positions in the secondary, no matter if that’s at corner, nickel, or back at safety,” Green said. “I can do it all. So really just wherever the team needs me, that’s what I’m going to do.”
With 13 pass breakups in 2023, Green was a second-team ALL-ACC pick. His physicality and versatility are what jumped out to San Francisco.
“He’s got a heck of a mentality, Renardo,” Lynch said. “I mean, that’s the thing we really loved about him. 186 pounds, but he wants to hit you. And everyone correlates interceptions to ball production. We look at it, PBUs, and he had 13 PBUs, one of the tops in the nation last year, had one interception, one forced fumble, really good tackler, plays a tough physical game.
“He told us 15 times when we called him, ‘you got a dog, you got a dog’. And that’s exactly what we thought when we drafted him. He can play man-to-man, he’ll get up, challenge receivers, has done it against some really top level players and fired up to have him as well.”
Green stands by it all, saying the 49ers got a player with “[t]he mentality of a dog. One thing that [49ers defensive backs coach Daniel Bullocks] said was that he wouldn’t want to fight me. I asked him why and he said, ‘Because I feel like you’ll fight until you die.’ I said, ‘Yeah, that’s what a dog is. You ever seen a dog fight?’ So, he’s seen a lot of things, just on paper about me as a person and how I am. You’re getting a dog, a tenacious football player, an instinctive, athletic football player, and a versatile, smart football player.”
In his two years as a starter on the outside, Green had 101 tackles and 19 PBUs, with quarterbacks posting a 54.2% completion rate when targeting him.
Dominick Puni
Versatility was the theme of the night, as the 49ers view Puni as someone who can play all five positions along the offensive line.
“I actually took a visit to the 49ers about two weeks ago,” Puni said. “It was my last visit. They saw me more as an interior. So, guard, center, being able to help out inside. Tackle, if needed in a pinch.”
The 49ers traded up eight spots with the Eagles to get Puni, who did not allow a quarterback sack or hit in 325 pass block snaps in 2023. Somewhere Brock Purdy is clapping.
“Our belief is that we’re going to start him on the inside as a guard,” Lynch said. “But the cool thing about Dominick is, it’s not often you can say this about a player, that he can play all five. And we believe that’s the case with him. He snapped in practice, he snapped in the Senior Bowl down in Mobile, played some center in the game, played left tackle in ’23, guard in the previous year. And so, we believe he has it in him, and that’s really a cool thing to have in a player. And he can do it at a high level. So, it’s part of the reason we moved up to take him there and are really fired up about him.”
On to Day 3
As things stand the 49ers have the following picks on Day 3:
Round 4 – 124
Round 4 -135
Round 5 – 173
Round 5 – 176
Round 6 – 215
Round 7 – 251