Predicting What the San Francisco 49ers Starting Lineup Looks Like in 2018

The San Francisco 49ers will likely go through a slew of roster changes this offseason and throughout all of 2017. This means the starting lineup will look vastly different at the beginning of 2018, so let’s take a way-too-early prediction on how the Niners shape up over a year from now.

In an appearance on KNBR 1050, former San Francisco 49ers defensive end Justin Smith predicted  an “80 to 90 percent a different roster” two years down the road.

This points to a complete rebuild of the Niners’ current 53-man group, which is something new head coach Kyle Shanahan and general manager John Lynch will need to do in order to get San Francisco back on track.

So what if we could predict how the 49ers roster would look like, not at the beginning of 2017, but rather at the start of the 2018 season?

San Francisco 49ers

It’s what’s called a SWAG — a “scientific wild-ass guess,” at best. There are so many opportunities for change between now and then. Shanahan, Lynch and the team will go through two free-agency periods, as well as two different NFL Drafts.

Players will be cut, extended, traded or whatever other scenarios our little heads can come up with between now and Week 1 of 2018.

Still, we like predictions, don’t we?

And that’s what we’ll do here. Let’s go ahead and try to predict how San Francisco’s starting lineup will shape up two seasons from now. We’ll try to mix in some cornerstone pieces the 49ers already have on their roster — they have a few, believe it or not.

But we can’t totally link pending free agents or NFL Draft prospects quite yet. In those cases, we’ll label starters merely as “free-agent acquisition” or “NFL Draft pick” if we can’t quite land the fit.

SO let’s get this thing started, beginning with the always-overlooked special teams.