Lucky me, my two favorite mainland football teams crossed paths last week.

The Oregon Ducks held their Pro Day on Tuesday, and the San Francisco 49ers brought a contingent that included GM John Lynch and seven scouts to Eugene, Ore.

Call me nerdy — or boring, as one colleague once labeled me — but the NFL Draft process is an exhilarating time.

This one is doubly exciting because I get to discuss both the Ducks and the 49ers.

The draft process is basically a postseason nationwide interview for college football prospects who are seeking a job in the NFL, the highest level of the nation’s most popular sport.

Included in that process on Tuesday was former Mililani quarterback Dillon Gabriel, who also was among a record 12 Ducks at last month’s NFL Combine in Indianapolis.

But Tuesday likely marked the final time the core players of Oregon’s Big Ten championship team will be together.

“Feels amazing,” Gabriel said in a video posted on GoDucks.com “It’s a blessing. It’s fun. Makes you miss it with these guys. … So you’re kinda closing this chapter of your life and moving on to the next.”

Gabriel said this new episode has brought “uncertain and unknown, new territories for us. But for me that’s where most of my growth has come during those times. I’d be a hypocrite to say it hasn’t been good for me. I’ve learned a lot through this process. You wonder, ‘Am I doing too little, am I doing too much?’ This is your first and last time doing it. Just finding that balance. But (I) have good people around me and been around people who have been through this process and I try to ask as many questions as I can.”

Gabriel also seemed to be welling with pride seeing former Oregon QBs at the event in Justin Herbert and Bo Nix.

“Justin being here, Bo being here, you just look at the quality of person that’s been a quarterback at Oregon and you appreciate that, “Gabriel said. “It’s a such a special place to have a quarterback that represents this place well on and off the field. And I think we take pride in that. I definitely do, and I knew that was my responsibility. … We’re just missing Marcus (Mariota) here, but gosh it’s a great fraternity of QBs and I’m glad to represent it as well.”

But the Niners contingent probably wasn’t focused entirely on the undersized Gabriel, who stands 5 feet, 10 ½ inches. That’s because they have serious issues beyond quarterback and have 49ers fans wondering, “What’s going on?”

Well, the NFL free agency period that started March 12 saw the Niners purge their roster, ending years of heavy spending by letting veteran and popular players walk instead of re-working deals.

CBS Sports reported that the contingent of former 49ers such as Dre Greenlaw and Talanoa Hufanga fetched $321 million in the first four days of free agency — the most spent on one team’s departing free agents in NFL history. The Niners, meanwhile, spent just $37 million for incoming free agents in that span, marking the largest spending difference in NFL history. BTW, those numbers have since risen as of Wednesday, to $341.5 million for 15 departing 49ers and $41.8 million for 10 incoming players, according to Nick Wagoner of ESPN.com.

“We’ve got this thing called the draft, and we’ve got a lot of picks,” Lynch told The Athletic during Stanford’s Pro Day on Wednesday, in his first public comments since free agency began. “And I think the thing the fans should know is, we have a plan. And we’re gonna execute that plan. And we’re excited about the opportunity.”

So San Francisco is putting all its proverbial eggs in one basket — the NFL Draft, where the 49ers have 11 picks, the most of any NFL team.

Well, they better hit on their picks, because their past drafts have been full of misses under the Lynch and Kyle Shanahan regime.

By my count, the Niners have hit on only five of 26 players in the first three rounds since the two took over in 2017.

Steve Keim, a former GM of the Cardinals who’s now with the Klutch Sports Group, provided analytics regarding hit rates on a Colin Cowherd show.

“When we ran those analytical numbers. … over a 10-year period, when you look at the first three rounds, 51% were guys who hit. And I’m talking about guys who are solid starting players in the National Football League.”

You don’t need to be a math maven to know that 51% is much better than a team that’s hitting below the Mendoza line in draft success (sorry for the mixed metaphor).

The 49ers’ blind spot has been the third round, where they’ve hit on just two of 13 picks (Fred Warner in 2018 and Dominick Puni last year). The misses have been brutal, including back-to-back years of drafting running backs and another year where they drafted a tight end who never played a down for them and a kicker who most 49ers fans despise.

The money round for them has been the fifth. That’s where they found George Kittle, Greenlaw, Hufanga and Deommodore Lenoir. Two other fifth-rounders — short corners D.J. Reed and Sam Womack — were cut but have found success on other teams.

The 49ers received a fifth-round pick for Deebo Samuel, replenishing a fifth-round pick that they forfeited for an administrative accounting error in 2022.

Even the later rounds have resulted in success, such as NT D.J. Jones (sixth round, 2017), WR Jauan Jennings (seventh, 2020), RB Elijah Mitchell (sixth, 2021) and QB Brock Purdy (seventh, 2022).

Those later rounds are where the majority of the Ducks come into play.

Besides DT Derrick Harmon and OT Josh Conerly Jr., who are fringe first-rounders, most of the Ducks will fall in the middle to late rounds.

Lynch was caught having a one-on-one conversation with linebacker Jeffrey Bassa and Niners podcasters started making the connection and comparison between Bassa and Greenlaw. Both are converted defensive backs, have coverage skills, speed (Bassa improved his 40 time at the Pro Day to 4.55) and leadership qualities.

DE Jordan Burch, TE Terrance Ferguson, WR Tez Johnson, DT Jamaree Caldwell and DB Jabbar Muhammad also could be 49ers fits in those middle to late rounds.

I don’t believe Gabriel will be in the 49ers’ sights because they have three young QBs on their roster in Purdy, Mac Jones and Tanner Mordecai, a practice squad free-agent rookie whose arm and speed (4.46) are superior to Purdy and Jones.

But as Gabriel put it, “You just need one team and one believer.”

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Reach Curtis Murayama at cmurayama@staradvertiser.com.