49ers: Trent Baalke draft picks finally stealing the spotlight

Former San Francisco 49ers general manager Trent Baalke isn’t exactly revered by Niners fans. But a couple of his former draft picks remain key cogs in the team’s defense.

San Francisco 49ers fans don’t exactly hold former general manager Trent Baalke in the highest regard. In fact, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that he’s considered one of the team’s biggest mistakes of the past decade.

No seriously, that’s exactly what he’s been called.

In an article published in June of 2018, Bleacher Report’s Brad Gagnon straight up labeled the hiring of Baalke as the 49ers’ biggest mistake of the entire decade. And at the time it was hard to fault that logic.

Baalke inherited a 49ers team with a ton of talent but did next to nothing to replace his star players. Disappointing drafts became the story of Baalke’s tenure in San Francisco with players like A.J. Jenkins, Anthony Davis, and Joshua Garnett the lowlights of an awful six-year stint as GM.

On top of that, his numerous feuds with head coaches Jim Harbaugh and Chip Kelly only furthered the 49ers faithful’s disdain for him and many applauded when he was finally let go in favor of John Lynch in 2017.

But using a bit of revisionist history, maybe, just maybe, Baalke wasn’t all that bad. Or at least, a couple of his previously-deemed draft busts are finally starting to come into their own.

The oft-injured Jimmie Ward had thrived in his return to full health playing free safety in Robert Saleh’s defense. At one point, Ward was just one of the many injury-riddled draft busts of the Baalke era.

Now, he’s a key piece of perhaps the most dominant pass defense in NFL history.

And then there’s Arik Armstead. Armstead was selected the year after Ward in 2015 with the 17th overall pick in the draft. And for the first four years of his career, he looked like nothing more than an underwhelming run stuffer.

However, the Oregon product has thrived in the 49ers’ new wide-9 defensive scheme and is having a career year as a result. Incredibly, Armstead leads the team with a whopping 10 sacks exceeding his career total of nine over his first four seasons.

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Armstead has the most sacks on the team with the most sacks in the NFL.

The 49ers will try their hardest to lock Armstead up long-term this offseason when he hits the open market for the first time, but with extensions in-line for both George Kittle and DeForest Buckner — another Baalke gem — that might prove difficult.

Either way, he’s going to get paid somewhere.

Even a player like Jaquiski Tartt who was drafted in the second round of the 2015 NFL Draft is having a career year as well. And as has been a common trend, a clean bill of health certainly hasn’t hurt matters.

So what do we take away from all of this? Was Baalke actually not as bad of a talent evaluator as many have made him out to be? Did he really do more good for the 49ers organization than anyone will give him credit for?