From the notion he was not head coach Kyle Shanahan's preferred quarterback to take No. 3 overall in the 2021 NFL Draft, to making just four starts in two seasons before being traded to the Dallas Cowboys, Trey Lance's tenure with the San Francisco 49ers did not go anywhere near as planned. Taking a quarterback who had started one full season in college at the FCS level was a risky idea, and the Niners got all the downside of doing it.
When considering the biggest draft busts in franchise history, Lance gets the detriment of a good dose of recency bias. But it's also fair to say he'll hold a high position on any kind of list in that regard that's made for a long time.
Sports Illustrated's Matt Verderame went some interesting directions in naming the biggest draft bust for each NFL team since the 1970 AFL-NFL merger, and the 49ers were among them.
Verderame went back to the late-1990s to unearth the 49ers' biggest draft bust, quarterback Jim Druckenmiler (No. 26 overall in the 1997 draft).
Druckenmiller played in four games and started one for San Francisco as a rookie in 1997, going 21-of-52 for 239 yards with one touchdown and four interceptions. He played in two games the following season, with zero pass attempts. He never threw an NFL pass after his rookie season.
The 49ers traded Druckenmiller to the Miami Dolphins in September of 1999, and he was cut by them the following preseason. He then spent time with the Memphis Maniax in the Arena Football League and the Los Angeles Avengers in the first iteration of the XFL in 2001. The Indianapolis Colts offered him a tryout to be their No. 3 quarterback in 2003, but he did not win that gig.
If Druckenmiller didn't play much, he was absolutely awful when he did play. If he was envisioned as Young's successor, and it's fair to think he was with the investment of a first-round pick, he didn't even make to Young's concussion-truncated final season (1999) on the Niners' roster.
That combination is more than enough for Druckenmiller to fend off Lance as the biggest draft bust San Francisco have ever had.
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