San Francisco 49ers General Manager John Lynch and his staff will have to wait a bit longer to make their fourth-round selection in this year’s NFL draft and will lose out on a 2025 fifth-round pick as the result of payroll errors made in 2022.
The penalties handed down by the league are the result of an accounting mistake that impacted salary-cap projections.
“This action resulted from a league review that found administrative payroll accounting errors at the close of the 2022 league year that resulted in a misreporting of the club’s cumulative player compensation,” the NFL said in a Monday statement. “The NFL determined that the club would have remained under the salary cap at all times regardless of the error and there was no intent to circumvent the cap.”
The NFL moved the 49ers’ 2024 fourth-round pick, No. 131, to the bottom of the round, behind the compensatory selections, to No. 135.
“We take responsibility and accept the imposed discipline from the NFL due to a clerical payroll error,” the 49ers said in a statement. “At no time did we mislead or otherwise deceive the league or gain a competitive advantage in connection with the payroll mistake.”
