49ers take Nick Bosa with No. 2 pick in NFL draft

SANTA CLARA - The 49ers had a difficult decision to make with the second pick in the NFL draft: Take Nick Bosa, take Quinnen Williams or trade down.

The 49ers chose Option A. They drafted Bosa, the defensive end from Ohio State.

“Two players really separated themselves from the pack,” general manager John Lynch said Thursday in the 49ers’ auditorium. “They were Bosa and Williams. Ultimately we had those guys ranked extremely evenly. Then, you look at where your team has the biggest need, and while we would have been very happy with Quinnen, we felt Nick was a piece we still could use, another edge guy. We had Dee (Ford) on one end, and now we have that other end, and we can come at people in waves.”

Lynch added: “We had (trade) conversations going into the draft. There were a lot of teams that said, ‘Depending on how (the draft) breaks, we’d like to give you a call (about the No. 2 pick).’ I think there was one call that happened, but it wasn’t of interest. Nothing really materialized.”

So the 49ers kept their pick, and took the best edge rusher in the draft, according to most experts.

Bosa, 21, recorded 17.5 sacks in 29 collegiate games. Last year, just three games into his junior season, he suffered an abdominal injury and, rather than rehabilitate in order to rejoin his team for the end of the season, he left the team, withdrew from Ohio State and started preparing for the draft.

“I guess we’re the beneficiary of him taking the year (off),” Lynch said. “He is healthy and ready to go. We’ll have a minicamp this coming weekend and he’ll be ready to roll.”

Lynch said he particularly admires Bosa’s explosive first step as a pass rusher: “He gains a ton of ground. It’s incredibly quick. He has a mix of speed and power, and is an absolute technician with his hands. It looks like he’s been doing pass rush moves since he was 3 years old. He’s so proficient. You put that together and you have a pretty special package.”

The 49ers now have five ?first-round picks on their defensive line: Dee Ford, DeForest Buckner, Solomon Thomas, Arik Armstead and Bosa. The 49ers also have the second-most expensive defensive line in the NFL. They’re spending roughly $49 million of their cap space on that position in 2019.

“The defensive line is something (head coach) Kyle Shanahan and I had as a priority when we got here,” Lynch explained. “Two of the first things we talked about was finding our quarterback and finding the guys to knock the quarterback down. I think both in quality and quantity, we’ve improved drastically in that respect.”

Minutes after Lynch answered questions, Bosa spoke on a ?conference call with local reporters about his eagerness to join the 49ers. “It’s unbelievable, just to be on a team that really shouldn’t have been this high in the draft with all the talent they have, and then they added Dee Ford, which just makes this D-line pretty scary. It’s impossible to double-team any of us because then you’re single-teaming one of us. It’s going to be fun.”

Bosa comes to the 49ers with question marks, partially because he quit his college team. He could have returned and played the final month of the 2018 season, but chose not to. Given Bosa’s decision, the 49ers were eager to find out what his teammates think of him. So Lynch and vice president of player personnel Adam Peters visited an Ohio State practice late last season to learn more.

“It was very fortuitous for us because Nick Bosa decided to show up at practice,” Lynch said. “He was away from his team all year getting healthy, and this guy shows up in sunglasses, and the entire practice stopped. ?Every player, every coach, every student manager on that team stopped and embraced Bosa.

“They could have had some animosity for a guy who made a decision to leave his team to get ready for his next step in his professional career. Instead, they all were appreciative of a guy who they had a ton of respect for. They’ll tell you he’s one of the most beloved players that’s ever been through (Ohio State).”

Bosa said his teammates like him so much because he’s genuine. “I just really relate to all my guys. I’m not a vocal leader, as in like a rah-rah guy, but whenever I tell you something, it’s usually coming from my heart. I don’t usually speak unless it is something from my heart.”

Meaning Bosa is brutally honest, which was part of the risk of drafting him. The past few years, he has written controversial pro-Donald Trump and anti-Colin Kaepernick tweets. And in 2014, when he was 16, he “liked” a post on Instagram which included racist and homophobic language.

“We learned of that,” Lynch said. “That’s not something that we like, but we choose to think more about what we’ve heard from people as to who the person really is. We’re going to give him a fresh start, and we’d hope that everybody would.”

Shanahan added: “Our players will be very excited to meet him and really love him as a person.”

A reporter asked Bosa to explain his troubling social media activity. “I was a little insensitive in some of the things I said,” Bosa said. “I’ve learned a lot in the past few months, and I’m just ready to move forward from that, put it in the past. I was a 16-year-old scrolling through my Instagram, and I liked a picture of somebody I knew with a girl. There was nothing racist about the picture. Obviously, there were some bad things said in the hashtags, but I didn’t read those. As a 16-year-old in high school, you don’t think something like that will come back and bite you, so that’s that.”

As you can see, the 49ers had a difficult decision to make.