Kurtenbach: Mock this — I’m planting a flag on who the 49ers should draft in the first round

A lot of people keep asking me who the Niners should take with pick No. 27 in the 2026 NFL Draft.

It’s a fair question, obviously. One I ask myself 10 times a day. But it’s also a loaded question.

For one, my name isn’t John Lynch, and he and I don’t agree on every prospect.

For another, trying to seriously guess who will and will not be on the board by the late first round is a fool’s errand. The NFL Draft is a liar’s convention wrapped in a casino, and anyone telling you they have the board perfectly mapped out is giving themselves away as a con artist.

There are, undoubtedly, countless good options.

Would Tennessee wide receiver Chris Brazzell be a good pick? Absolutely. Alabama tackle Kaydyn Proctor? Sign me up. Missouri defensive end Zion Young or Oregon tight end Kenyon Sadiq? Great choices.

But amid the hours of film I watch every night when the kids go to sleep — seriously, I’m ill, please send help — and the countless text messages I send bugging folks around the league about these prospective players, there is one guy I simply cannot shake.

Call it a draft crush. Call it an infatuation. Call it whatever you want. I just can’t rid myself of the creeping feeling that Texas linebacker Anthony Hill Jr. will be considered to be the one who got away if San Francisco passes on him at No. 27.

That, of course, is if he’s even available, but we already went over that.

Consider this a far-too-early flag plant, but this kid has the goods.

Watch him for five minutes (or way, way longer), and it’s impossible to miss. He’s hyper-instinctive and frighteningly athletic. There is zero wasted movement in his game, and when he arrives at the ball carrier, he arrives with bad intentions. He is violent. His coverage chops — whether he’s matching up in man or dropping into zone — are high-end. Functionally, he’s as strong as any linebacker you’ll see in this class. Or really, any class.

It was legitimately shocking to me to see him weigh in at nearly 240 pounds at the combine. Why? Because on tape, he glides like a guy who is at least 20 pounds lighter than that.

Then again, when he strikes you, he hits like he’s 260.

Look at the raw production down in Austin. Over three seasons at Texas, Hill racked up 249 total tackles. He lived in the opponent’s backfield to the tune of 31.5 tackles for loss and 17 sacks. Add in eight forced fumbles, and you’ve got a guy who doesn’t just play defense; he dictates the terms of engagement. Sure, scouts will nitpick his profile. They’ll say he blitzed too often — that won’t happen at the NFL level. They’ll tell you his eyes can occasionally linger a beat too long, or that his pad level gets a little high when he’s trying to stack and shed.

Those qualms are valid, but harping on them misses the point.

You’re drafting a guided missile. You can refine technique, but you can’t teach explosion.

The 49ers, obviously, have a lot of needs right now. Amid that noise, the linebacker position is too often forgotten. But make no mistake, it’s a need. Yes, you can get by with Dee Winters playing weak-side linebacker next to Fred Warner. But if you want to actually transform your defense, that’s the position to upgrade.

Winters is no Dre Greenlaw replacement. In fact, based on his play down the stretch, he’s practically begging to be replaced himself.

And we should never forget that for a couple of quarters in 2024, with Greenlaw coming off his Achilles tear, the Niners’ woeful defense suddenly looked like an entirely different and terrifying animal purely because No. 53 was on the field. The juice he brought was undeniable.

But it was fleeting.

The Niners seemingly only remembered this impact after Greenlaw agreed to a contract with the Denver Broncos this past offseason. Perhaps it was a purely political move to save face with a restless fanbase, but the team brass flew out to Texas to visit Greenlaw, making a last-ditch pitch to convince him to return to San Francisco. (How hard of a press they actually put on is entirely subject to interpretation.)

This might be too lofty a statement to make in late February — time will tell — but I see Hill as the heir apparent to Greenlaw.

Actually, let me take it a step further. Given his processing speed and three-down skill set, he might just be Warner’s replacement well down the line, too.

San Francisco can go in a dozen different directions between now and when they are finally on the clock at the end of April. Maybe they sift through the bargain bin and sign a discount veteran in free agency (there are plenty of capable ones out there this year), eliminating the need for a linebacker early in the draft. Or perhaps that long-term Trent Williams replacement is inexplicably sitting there at No. 27, considering how ridiculously deep this class is at offensive tackle. (Not that they should be desperate to replace Trent for 2026, but you get the idea.)

But if the Niners’ front office were to call me up today and say, “Who would you take?” I could spout off a dozen names that make logical sense.

The only one I’d feel truly, deeply, strongly about is Hill.

There’s always a player I would consider an A-plus first-round pick for the 49ers, were they to get him.

Last year, it was Mykel Williams.

The year before that, it was Ricky Pearsall.

(And I’m still buying stock, if you have any to sell.)

So this is, in a way, my heat check.

Am I going 3-for-3?