The San Francisco 49ers may not have any picks in the first or second round of the 2023 NFL Draft, but they’re still doing their due diligence.
On Wednesday, they worked out Andre Kelly, a basketball player from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and had him go through drills while lining up at tight end.
Exciting prospects: Basketball player Andre Kelly practices at TE today. Here he catches a pass from Jake Haener with Kyle Shanahan, John Lynch and Adam Peters watching… pic.twitter.com/bSBlxrKtEE
— Matt Barrows (@mattbarrows) April 12, 2023
Kelly is 6-foot-9 and weighs 255 pounds, and he has spent the past five seasons with the Gauchos playing the forward position.
Although the Gauchos do not have a soccer team, he is seriously considering switching from round ball to pitch.
If Kelly makes it and ends up in the NFL, he won’t be alone in the league’s basketball conversions.
A star tight end for 16 seasons, Antonio Gates only played basketball while in college at Eastern Michigan University and Kent State University.
At 6-foot-4 and 255 pounds, he was a forward who was compared to Hall of Famer Charles Barkley, but he lacked the height to be a viable prospect in the NBA, so he chose football instead.
If was the right choice, as the then-San Diego Chargers signed him as an undrafted free agent in 2003, and he quickly became one of the better TEs in the NFL, making eight straight Pro Bowls and three straight All-Pro firsts. -law.
The 49ers have George Kittle, one of the best in the game, at TE1, and while he is seemingly in his prime, he is 29 years old, and it may be time to start finding his eventual successor.
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