Kyle Shanahan knows more about football than I do. It is truly a case of he’s forgotten more than I’ll ever know. This is especially true when it comes to evaluating what he wants from his quarterback. While I’m happy to defer to the 49ers’ head coach on virtually everything football-related, he made it clear Monday in his press conference that there’s one area of the team’s present quarterback search that he’s missed the mark on.

Fan angst over the potential selection of a quarterback they may not want was the subject of a couple questions directed at Shanahan during the presser. While Shanahan rightly explained why he doesn’t take into account what fans think, even though he hears it everywhere he goes, he’s wrong in his attempt at easing anxieties about the choice.

“Everyone’s excited to draft a quarterback,” Shanahan said. “If you would have been excited about one of these guys at 12, then you should be excited at three. It’s about whether you get one. So, let us go through the process. We’re going to get a good one.”

The problem is that being excited about a player at the No. 12 pick and not being excited that same player at the No. 3 pick is only part of the argument.

That’s an acceptable statement if the team was slated to pick third without a trade up, and they took a quarterback fans think they could’ve gotten after a trade back. Teams are looking to get the best players, not trying to move back to where that player will fall to them.

What the 49ers did is the opposite. They paid an exorbitant premium to jump up nine spots in the draft. Now San Francisco is sitting at No. 3 and in control of their process. Nobody is going to jump over them to pick a player they might want, and they won’t have first-round picks in 2022 or 2023. Team-building now becomes more difficult and their margin for error has diminished greatly, on top of the fact all signs point to the 49ers taking the least gifted of the three presumably available quarterbacks.

Alabama quarterback Mac Jones, for example, is an unpopular choice among 49ers fans in part because the team may not have needed to shell out all that draft capital to slide up to get him. It was a giant swing with the trade, but the pick is going to come off to fans as more of a bunt if Jones is the selection.

It sounds like Shanahan doesn’t quite understand the gravity of the trade and the ensuing pick.

“I feel somewhat bad for whoever we ended up taking that all this, you trade whatever, three ones, which I don’t get how people think that, but, you traded three ones and you did all this stuff to make the biggest move in the history of the organization. That’s a little dramatic to me,” Shanahan said.

It is literally the biggest move in 49ers history. Three first-round picks and a future third-round choice to jump up nine spots to draft a quarterback in the top three is a massive move that’ll have franchise-altering consequences for better or for worse.

Shanahan is viewing the move solely through the lens of the player and leaving the draft capital and cost to move up in the draft to the front office. He’s getting a guy he thinks can put the 49ers in Super Bowl contention every year for the foreseeable future. There’s no concern over what happens if he’s wrong because he’s confident in his pick and his evaluation.

He’s asking for the trust of the 49ers fan base less than five years after passing on Deshaun Watson and Patrick Mahomes because he wanted Kirk Cousins. He should forgive the people who aren’t thrilled at the idea of history effectively repeating itself in 2021.

Ultimately Shanahan can render the future picks moot if the team picks the right quarterback. A star under center readjusts the margin for error to something wider where the 2022 and 2023 first-round picks become less valuable.

As of his press conference though, that’s still a massive unknown regardless of who they wind up picking.

This trade and the pick are both massive leaps that will have ripple effects deep into the chapter of 49ers history that this team is etching. It’s a big deal no matter how badly the coach wants to downplay it, and anyone that cares even a little bit about the club will fret over the unknowns that come with such a big swing.

The short-term matters for sure, but the long-term is also something worth keeping an eye on. This trade will have an effect on both. If Shanahan can’t see the possible adversity ahead if this move doesn’t work to perfection, then his long-term future will be worth keeping an eye on as well.