Now that the dust has settled on the hiring of John Lynch as the 49ers GM, writer Kevin Jones, director of content Josh Lander and update anchor talent Matt Kolsky chatted about the changing direction of the team.
“I have crushed Jed York, and I don’t know if he listens to this or not, but he recognized a problem in his building,” Jones said. “The 49ers needed a fresh coat of paint. Your building was rotting. Even the employees who work there, their attitude. People are like, ‘I work for the 49ers,” and other people are like, ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’
“Now it’s like, I work for the 49ers! We have John Lynch. We have credible people in here who can communicate and build us back up. And I think that was much more needed than talent evaluation. You can glean other aspects. You can get Adam Peters to run scouting. You can fix the talent evaluation system. The 49ers needed leadership. Kyle Shanahan is also going to be a leader but they needed that left and right hand to be married together. That’s why I love this hire.”
In addition to several other points, Kolsky pointed out that 49ers CEO Jed York has been able to deflect so much criticism about the Lynch hire simply because people like the new GM.
“Didn’t Jed York kind of do a brilliant thing here?” Kolsky said. “In as much as no one knows what to say about it? All anyone can judge about John Lynch is on what kind of dude he is. So even the people who don’t love the hire are like, well I don’t know, but he’s a helluva guy.”
Co-host Josh Lander went on to make fun of how York did botch the Jim Tomsula hiring and made a wisecrack of Trent Baalke’s communication skills. The days of clown show press conferences appear to be over.
“A billion organization had the worst communicators at the top of their food chain,” said Jones. “Think if Microsoft had that? Now they have people who can communicate — not just with the public, but internally.”