Lynch: I’m committed, our ownership is committed and Kyle and I are committed to finding a way to get better

Feb 2, 2023 - 9:01 PM

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John Lynch and Kyle Shanahan held their final press conference of the 2022-23 season. Questions inevitably ranged from the NFC championship game to Brock Purdy’s health and the future of the quarterback position for the 49ers. One question that continues to come up is the future of Lynch as the 49ers’ General Manager.

Lynch declined an offer to join Amazon and their NFL coverage in 2022 to return as GM. Speculation grew that the 49ers could promote Lynch to VP of the team and promote Adam Peters to GM. After three NFC championship appearances and one Super Bowl appearance, Lynch has put together a stellar resume of roster building.

Lynch was asked about continuing as the GM of the 49ers:

“I plan on being here. I really do, and I’m committed to doing this, and I’m having a great time doing it and committed to finding a way to get a little bit better. I’m really proud of what we were able to do this year.

That’s hard to say because our expectations and our standards were to win the whole thing, but I do think in life you have to be able to acknowledge that even when the end result isn’t what you wanted, that some special things happened. I’m proud of the team we built. I can’t say enough about the job Kyle and his coaching staff did.

I’ve got a lot of respect for our players, the way they handled themselves, and it’s hard to win a game in this league, let alone 12 straight and unfortunately in the last game, it just wasn’t in the cards and I think that will always be there, this feeling.

And first of all, let me just say it all due respect to Philly, they’re a fantastic football team, a really well-built team, and they came out and competed hard, but I’d love to be able to take them on with that same team we had and be able to do it with a full complement and some other things, but that wasn’t in the cards on that day.

I’ll still look back on this season with fond memories. Now our challenge, and this is all fresh, we’re doing closeout meetings, as Kyle said, dealing with coaches, I’m upstairs with the position coaches doing what we call our mine meetings where we, it’s an exit interview where we take a holistic look at all our players and so this is still very fresh. But our job now is to find a way to get better and there’s challenges to that, but that’s what we’ll do.

I’m committed, our ownership is committed and Kyle and I are committed to finding a way to get better and that’s exactly what we plan on doing. It’s just hard to conceptualize that because you’re still stuck in this season. In due time, we’ll move forward.”

There is no doubt that Lynch, Shanahan, and the front office have collaborated to build a strong roster and foundation through the draft, free agency, and with undrafted free agents. It sounds like there will be at least one more year with Lynch at the helm.