49ers to Forfeit Draft Pick Due to Administrative Accounting Errors
This is emabarrassing.
The 49ers must forfeit a fifth-round pick in 2025 due to multiple administrative accounting errors in 2022. In addition, their fourth-round pick this year will be moved to the end of the round.
Here's what the 49ers had to say in a written statement: "We take responsibility and accept the imposed discipline from the NFL due to a clerical payroll error. At no time did we mislead or otherwise deceive the league or gain a competitive advantage in connection with the payroll mistake.”
Apparently, the 49ers incorrectly disclosed to the league how much money they paid their players in 2022. According to the 49ers, this was an honest mistake and in no way were they trying to create a competitive advantage, which in some ways is even worse.
You could somewhat understand a team trying to bend a rule or find a loophole if it would create an advantage, although that would be cheating. But to simply make an accounting error that costs the team a fifth-round pick plus draft position in Round 4 is incompetent.
We don't yet know precisely what the 49ers did wrong, but it sounds like someone should get fired. I've never heard of an accounting mistake costing a team a draft pick. And a Round 5 pick is not a throwaway pick, considering that's the round in which the 49ers drafted George Kittle, Talanoa Hufanga and Deommodore Lenoir the past few years.
Let's see if anyone in the organization takes personal, public responsibility for this blunder.
