NEWSLETTER
The San Francisco 49ers are finally going to get an up-close-and-personal look at Khalil Mack, though, it comes a few months later than they would’ve wanted.
In fact, the 49ers still seem a bit miffed (if not mystified) that the Raiders didn’t accept the offer of their Bay Area rivals when they tried to acquire Mack before the season. So when asked about why the Bears beat the Niners out in the race to land Mack, Head Coach Kyle Shanahan offered up a pretty blunt response.
“I think you’d have to ask the Raiders,” Shanahan said, via Matt Maiocco of NBC Sports Bay Area. “But it takes two teams to get it done, and we went as hard as we could on it.”
But not hard enough to actually get it done, obviously.
You see, the 49ers were in the running to acquire Mack before the season started but ultimately fell short because the Chicago Bears made a whopper of an offer that the Oakland Raiders simply couldn’t refuse. Remember, we’re talking about first-round picks in 2019 and 2020, an additional sixth-round pick in 2019, and a third-round selection in 2020 going to the Raiders in exchange for Mack, Oakland/Las Vegas/Mystery City’s second-round pick in 2020, as well as a conditional fifth-round pick in 2020.
In fairness, you can see why that was a tough deal to turn down. But if you ask the 49ers, they would tell you they were in it to win it. And isn’t that what counts?
Since the trade with the Bears went down, the 49ers have been left with stuck in those remorseful “what could have been” feelings. Back in October, GM John Lynch expressed his belief his team’s offer was similar to the one the Bears put on the table. Then in late November, Lynch re-visited the trade he couldn’t pull off by continuing to pile on and beat a dead horse – literally moments after saying he didn’t want to beat said horse. In fact, Lynch would go on to say the 49ers offered more than what the Bears did to lock in a Mack deal. I’m not sure how a “similar” deal became “better” in the span of a month, but I do know time and distance make the heart grow fonder and I can understand why Lynch feels some type of way about Mack. Just look what he has done for the 2018 NFC North champions!
Ahhh, tales of the one who got away. Where would my life be without it?
