NFL Draft 2026: John Lynch, 49ers Using AI Which is Astoundingly Idiotic

John Lynch and the San Francisco 49ers are using AI to help run their professional football team.

How Astoundingly Idiotic.

John, will you let ChatGPT tell you who to take in the 2026 NFL Draft? Is it helping you make roster decisions?

If so, the Niners are in a world of hurt going forward. So is any team using AI for any important thinking, whether that be for roster building, branding, or gameday food pricing.

John Lynch and the 49ers are Using AI, A Crazy Thing to Admit

AI is all the rage. It's been pushed into and onto all of us in almost every aspect of technological life.

AI in your TV. AI to "help" you write (it's terrible at this, by the way).

I saw an ad for an AI-powered meat thermometer for a smoker. For what? I just need to know the number on the screen is accurate so I don't give my family salmonella poisoning.

And that's the issue with AI: It's inaccurate, unpredictable, and it lies.

There are many such instances of AI being not just blatantly wrong, but hilariously so. Adding appendages or extra fingers to people in pictures, big brands like Coca-Cola having their name misspelled, AI overviews from Google just straight-up lying. Things of that nature.

It's so bad at doing the simplest things this guy makes a ton of videos about it, like this one where ChatGPT tells him December has an "x" in it.

That's why it's insane to admit to the media that you, as the General Manager of an NFL team, are using AI.

Earlier this week, in the lead up to the 2026 NFL Draft, John Lynch shared on his AI use.

“A lot. I think just like the rest of the world, if you aren’t using it, you’re already behind.

"The cool thing is, what we’ve found, you don’t need to be an expert. Just like you at home planning a travel itinerary. You can just ask the thing, and it can spit out some pretty good ideas.

"Our developers, I think we’re fortunate to be where we are kind of at the epicenter of the innovation there, and we’ve tried to take advantage of that. I do think every team is probably using it in some form or fashion and I think that will only increase as we move forward.”

Here, Lynch gives away the game twice.

First, the "if you aren't using it, you're already behind" is the biggest sales pitch the venture capitalists have been using for nearly four years now. In reality, it’s using AI that sometimes puts you behind because it lies, hallucinates, and makes shit up out of nowhere. If you ask it something, and trust what it's saying is correct, but it ends up being wrong you now have to do that work again. You have to start from scratch.

Second, Lynch acknowledges being in San Francisco, where the broligarchy resides. In my mind, that means some of these guys in bed with the AI companies have gone to drinks or dinner with the Niners GM, working to and ultimately convincing him to use AI. And not only to use it, but publicly shout to the world "I love AI!"

The funniest line in his little schpeel about AI is, "you don't need to be an expert" which, I believe he means an expert at computers to use AI, but it comes off as "you don't need to be an expert to use AI and be the GM of an NFL team."

Which, dude, yes you do. That's why you have the job!

John Lynch played 15 years in the NFL, 11 years with Tampa Bay and 4 with the Broncos, hitting opposing players hard and oftentimes with his head.

But even if he did get a little dinged up along the way, Lynch has earned the respect of 49ers ownership to be the GM and build the team how he sees fit. He's been in the Niners' front office since 2017, and San Francisco has been quite competitive during that span. They've been to two Super Bowls and four NFC Championships.

All of that presumably shows his expertise in the subject of football.

And yet, he's using AI? For what, exactly?

Will John Lynch Use AI in the 2026 NFL Draft?

Maybe the better question is: How much will Lynch use AI in the draft this weekend?

Unfortunately, none of the reporters at his presser asked either of these as follow up questions.

As a concession, I will say I get it if the 49ers have internal technologies they've developed which use AI. I've worked at places like that, and know it's not the same as just going to Gemini or ChatGPT. You can feed internal tools a ton of data and have the AI work off of that to give you an answer.

But AI is still wrong even then. A lot.

Hey Claude, Make the Denver Broncos 2026 NFL Draft Picks for Me, the GM

After Lynch said this the other day, I went to Claude and asked it to tell me who to pick for the Denver Broncos 2026 NFL Draft picks. I fed it it he picks, I told the AI by Anthropic the Broncos needs were inside linebacker, tight end, defensive line, then running back, wide receiver, safety, and finally on the third tier, EDGE and QB.

Then, I fed it more information: I gave it Daniel Jeremiah's top-150 players from the draft this year. It's not a long enough list to get through all of the Broncos picks, but it was important info.

Finally, after telling it I am the Broncos GM and I need it to make the picks for me, it spit them out, complete with logic.

This is who AI picked for the Denver Broncos in the 2026 NFL Draft:

• Pick 62: Jihaad Campbell, LB, Alabama
• Pick 108 (from NO): Gunnar Helm, TE, Kansas State
• Pick 111 (from MIA): Dontay Corleone, DL, Cincinnati
• Pick 170: Cody Schrader, RB, Missouri
• Pick 246: Zakhari Franklin, WR, UTSA
• Pick 256: Jeremiah Cooper, S, Iowa State
• Pick 257: Chris Paul Jr., LB, Ole Miss

Four of the players went in the 2025 NFL Draft: Jihaad Campbell, Gunnar Helm, Zakhari Franklin, he's now in the Canadian Football League, and Oh, and Chris Paul Jr. He went to the LA Rams in the 5th round.

Maybe the most wrong pick is Cody Schrader, who the AI said was a great value at No. 170. He actually went undrafted in 2024. Not only has he been in the NFL for three years, he was not good enough to be drafted let alone at No. 170. And he's currently on the Broncos roster.

Dontay Corleone is at least draft eligible right now, but ESPN gives him a No. 214 ranking, meaning taking him at No. 111 would be an insane reach.

Finally, Jeremiah Cooper isn't even draft eligible this year. He just transferred to Penn State.

So, five of Claude's picks are already in the NFL (or CFL), one's still in college, and one is actually taking part in the draft but would likely be a sixth or seventh-round pick, not a fourth.

Simply, AI cannot make draft picks.

Life is Imitating Art

Last year during the season, Microsoft Copilot ran the following ad showing how a hypothetical GM could use their AI to find players for their team.

In fact, the NFL and Microsoft partnered last year. They brought their Copilot AI to the NFL to help teams do...stuff.

But I sounded the alarms then, and I continue to do so now.

The following ad is silly at least, and crazy at worst.

Can an AI sort players based on 40-yard dash times? Yeah, probably. But again, are you going to trust it?

Now, can an AI sort players for "leadership"? No. No way. How does one even quantify leadership?

A guy was a captain on his team? Sure, but those guys aren't always the best leaders. Some are just given the title as the most important or longest-tenured dudes. What else goes into “leadership?”

Finally, they ask the AI to predict which player will average 100 tackles per year. That, again, is not possible. There's no data to show how well a college player does in the NFL yet, because he's still in college.

And even if you feed it all the relevant information—like my Broncos draft picks example earlier—sometimes AI tells you 1+1=tornado.

It's unreliable.

The reason why Lynch admitting he's using AI is so crazy to me, outside of my personal—albeit anecdotal—experience with the technology being really bad at what it promises to do, is that GMs are usually prideful, secretive, and mysterious in their ways.

They don't get pulled into groupthink, they are the thought leaders. They don't care what critics say of them, they boldly do what they think is right.

Then again, Lynch did take Trey Lance at No. 3 overall in 2021. Maybe he does need AI's help after all.

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Rich Kurtzman was born and raised in Denver Colorado and attended Colorado State University in Fort Collins in the aughts. He's been a professional writer since 2011, covering Colorado State football and men's basketball, as well as the Denver Broncos, for many outlets. Current Denver Broncos work can be found on Mile High Sports. Previous credits include CBS Denver and The USA TODAY Sports Media Group.