(Photo by Rob Carr/Getty Images)
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.
Intriguing prospect: Basketball player Andre Kelly is working out 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 last five seasons with the Gauchos where he has played the forward position.
Although the Gauchos do not have a football team, he is seriously considering switching from roundball to the gridiron.
If Kelly does so and ends up making it in the NFL, he will not be alone as far as converted basketball players in the league.
Antonio Gates, who was a star tight end for 16 seasons, played only 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 instead he picked football.
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 Pro Bowls in a row and three consecutive All-Pro first-teams.
The 49ers have George Kittle, one of the best in the game, at TE1, and although he is seemingly in his prime, he is 29 years of age, and it may be time to start finding his eventual successor.
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