The rain has stopped anyway. And a new dawn has broken over 4949 Centennial Blvd in Santa Clara. At least that’s how it feels after this draft. Sure, we won’t know how well these picks are for a couple years, but the deals John and Kyle pulled off to get Thomas (the guy they wanted anyway) and Foster (to trade past NO) were stellar. Foster was a top 5 pick in just about everyone’s book. As was Thomas. Ending up with both is a huge shot in the arm for the defense. Throw in a lanky press corner in Witherspoon and the team looks a little better. Given that, they still managed to gather an additional 2nd and 3rd round pick next year. Handy for trying to get their next and future quarterback. Next year’s class is much better than this one, so the picks will come in handy for trades up, or even to get Kirt Cousins,

And, it’s not like this teams doesn’t need everything, so every pick is worth some value. But beyond the 10 picks they drafted, the Niners already inked a few highly touted UDFAs in Cole Hikutini, KD Cannon, and Noble Nwachukwu among others. As I said, the roster was a wasteland of limited talent and ACL guys, so this looks to be a pretty big bloodletting for the incumbent players.

Parity being what it is (hi, Flying V67!), fortunes change quickly in the NFL. And with the parity factor built in to the schedule, we have an easier row to how schedule-wise. What does this mean for the 2017 season? Well, we’ll see.