It’s hard enough for the woeful 49ers to attract talent. Now the people they want are giving them secret loyalty tests. At least they passed.
New San Francisco general manager John Lynch claims he demanded secrecy from team brass during the interview process because he “wanted to see, ‘Could I trust this building?’ ” he told Bay Area radio station KNBR in an interview Wednesday.
It was an unusual move, with Lynch telling team CEO Jed York and executive Paraag Marathe their secrecy would be a condition of his candidacy.
Lynch claimed it was a reaction to concerning reports of leaks from within the 49ers organization.
“I made a big deal that this stayed quiet,” Lynch said. “First of all, you know what I was doing? Part of the rumors are things fly out of that building… And so that was part of my thinking.”
The candidacy and hiring came as a shock to the league – suggesting the 49ers passed Lynch’s secrecy test – and drew outrage in some corners from concerned rivals worried the former broadcaster will use information he gathered from them as a journalist as an advantage in his new post.
Despite Lynch’s claim he was testing the 49ers, the secrecy has led some around the league to theorize he kept his organizational aspirations a secret so he would not scare off teams from sharing strategic insights with him in his final weeks at Fox Sports.
Now that Lynch is in, however, there is little the NFC West rival Rams, Seahawks and Cardinals can do about what they shared with the Hall of Fame safety turned broadcaster.
For his part, Lynch seemed to admit he also was playing both sides of the fence to protect his broadcasting career, which could have been harmed if news got out and he did not land the 49ers job.
“I didn’t need the job,” Lynch said. “So that gave me great position to be able to kind of just be very forward, and I asked those [tough] questions, and I’m proud of the way that happened. I’m proud of the way they responded.”
He went on to talk about his impressions of York, saying the CEO seemed tired of the “strife and … contention in the building. He wants harmony.”
While Lynch did not come right out and say so, the strife and contention likely were a thinly veiled reference to the man he replaced, fired GM Trent Baalke.
That the 49ers were able to keep Lynch a secret lends credence to the popular theory Baalke was the source of leaks from within the organization.
Whatever the case, the 49ers better hope they have those leaks patched, or they could face another shakedown from their new GM – unless this is all part of some bigger, more elaborate test Lynch has yet to let us all in on.