Hiring John Lynch as general manager is 49ers' ultimate gamble

Tom Pelissero | USA TODAY Sports

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The San Francisco 49ers better hope their big bet on John Lynch as general manager pays off.

If it doesn't, good luck getting any respected personnel man to take on the next overhaul, as long as the same folks are calling the shots.

People in the league talk, and a lot of them are going to have a bad taste from the 49ers' nearly month-long, coast-hopping search to replace Trent Baalke (and Chip Kelly).

That's what happens when you conduct close to a dozen interviews with GM candidates -- flying Minnesota's George Paton and Arizona's Terry McDonough to Atlanta for second interviews with expected head coach pick Kyle Shanahan over the weekend before the 49ers hired Lynch on Sunday -- only to settle on a guy you could've found by turning on the TV.

Basically, Jed York, Paraag Marathe and whoever else is influencing the team's decision-making process took up a lot of people's time test-driving SUVs for a month and then bought a sports car.

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Nothing against Lynch, 45, who is praised as a man and a football mind by seemingly everybody who knows him. It's impossible to judge what he will be as a GM when he has literally no track record, other than having been an all-pro safety for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers — and a standout for the Denver Broncos under coach Mike Shanahan — as well as an analyst for the NFL on Fox.

The game changed a couple weeks ago when the 49ers zeroed in on Shanahan's talented son, Atlanta Falcons offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan, as their next head coach. (That happened after New England's Josh McDaniels dropped out, and while 49ers brass was still in Seattle interviewing potential GMs to pair with another coaching candidate, Tom Cable).

It's expected Lynch will hire an experienced personnel man — former Tampa Bay Buccaneers GM Mark Dominik is a logical target — to run the scouting side underneath him, which should help the transition. The roster is a teardown, and Lynch has a rare six-year contract to get it done. (Shanahan is likely to get the same.)

The 49ers said all along they were looking for a tandem that wanted to work together and knew how to build a championship culture. Lynch won one title with the Buccaneers in 2002. Shanahan would win one Sunday if the Falcons upset the New England Patriots. Presumably, Lynch doesn't get hired without Shanahan's blessing.

Still, there were signs this would go another direction all the way until Sunday. There were whispers last week about a mystery candidate with no scouting experience landing the job, but it was hard to believe after all the work they'd done on traditional GM options.

Maybe it shouldn't have been.

Nobody had seen a search process quite like this, in which a series of coach and GM candidates made a point of withdrawing publicly and leaks of "favorites" for both jobs seemed to shift as the field narrowed. York's mother, Denise DeBartolo York, was calling coaching candidates (which is her right as an owner), adding to suspicions about who really had final say.

The smartest man in all of this might be Chris Ballard, who declined the 49ers' interview request through the Kansas City Chiefs, then was hired swiftly on Sunday as GM of the Indianapolis Colts — a superior job — eight days after fired Ryan Grigson was fired.

For all the recent upheaval, the 49ers job had enough going for it for York and company to get an audience with many other candidates who had been on short lists around the league.

Fail with this gambit, and it could be tough next time just to get somebody on the plane.

Follow Tom Pelissero on Twitter @TomPelissero.

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