In the weeks leading up to the start of the 2025 NFL Draft, San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan said at the NFL annual meetings that they would consider taking a running back, which made sense given how depleted the running back room was last year.
Luckily for the 49ers, the 2025 draft was a great year to add a running back, given the dearth of talent at the position group. One running back that made sense for San Francisco was former Arizona State star Cam Skattebo.
Skattebo, who is a Rio Linda, California native, did it all for the Sun Devils last season as a runner and receiver out of the backfield. Skattebo thought there was a chance the 49ers could have drafted him, as he revealed on the St. Brown Podcast.
"I knew it probably was going to be mid-to-late third, potentially fourth, early fourth. I actually thought I was going to end up going to San Francisco with that 100th pick," Skattebo said.
"Vibes started getting high, lights started turning on, video started turning on, and no phone call. So we woke up, 9 am the next morning, on Saturday. We knew it was going to be within the first 10 picks because the Niners, the Giants, Tennessee, and somebody else had another pick. I knew one of those teams was going to take me. I didn’t know which one. And then the Giants called."
"I actually thought I was going to go to San Francisco with that 100th pick."
— St. Brown Podcast (@StBrownPodcast) May 28, 2025
Cam Skattebo reflects on his NFL Draft experience where the 49ers, the team he grew up cheering for, passed on him before the Giants selected him at pick 105 🏈 pic.twitter.com/C4uQ9KiLg8
As we know, the 49ers did not take a running back with the 100th pick. Instead, San Francisco addressed its secondary, drafting cornerback Upton Stout at the end of the third round.
Meanwhile, Skattebo was taken with the 105th pick in the fourth round by the New York Giants. The 49ers eventually got their running back in the fifth round, drafting Jordan James out of the University of Oregon. San Francisco added one more running back in the UDFA period, signing Corey Kiner from the University of Cincinnati.
It would’ve been a cool story to see the California native put on the 49ers’ helmet after growing up a fan of the team. However, San Francisco felt like they had more pressing needs in the third and fourth rounds before thinking about going after a running back.