New San Francisco 49ers general manager John Lynch says he was playing a little game with his new employer throughout the interview process.
Lynch told KNBR 680 on Wednesday that he asked CEO Jed York and executive Paraag Marathe to keep his candidacy a secret in order to see if he could trust them to not leak it to the media.
“One of the great and liberating things for me, and I think why this thing came to fruition, I made a big deal that this stay quiet,” Lynch said, via Kevin Jones of KNBR. “First of all, you know what I was doing? Part of the rumors are things fly out of that building. And I wanted to see if I could trust this person. And so that was part of my thinking.”
Lynch will have been pleased with the outcome. He was never listed as a candidate and his hiring came as a total surprise to pretty much everyone, so York and Marathe passed the test.
Lynch was probably motivated by things like this that went down at the end of Chip Kelly’s tenure as head coach. He didn’t want to be put in a similar situation, so he gave the organization a preliminary litmus test. Now he gets to see if that bargain is upheld now that he’ll be working in the building.
