Paraag Marathe, president of the San Francisco 49ers, was part of a panel discussion on Saturday at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference.
Marathe was asked about the importance of a quarterback to a team's success.
"That's the single biggest differentiator," he said. "If you can get by with average talent, but if you have a superior quarterback, you'll see the best quarterbacks -- the Hall of Fame quarterbacks -- it doesn't matter what kind of talent they have, even if they have really bad talent around them, they're going to finish 7-9 [or] 8-8. They're never going to go 3-13."
The 49ers and Colin Kaepernick are in discussions on a long-term extension.