49ers depth chart: Predicting wide receiver room for Week 1
By Peter Panacy
The 49ers depth chart still isn’t established fully for Week 1, meaning there could be some shakeups regarding these predictions for who makes the cut.
Perhaps no other position on the San Francisco 49ers‘ 2020 offseason roster has more question marks than at wide receiver.
It wasn’t supposed to be that way. After all, the Niners were banking on a full second-year explosion from up-and-coming wide receiver Deebo Samuel after he broke out during the latter half of his rookie season last year. Head coach Kyle Shanahan and Co. also spent a first-round NFL Draft pick this year on Arizona State’s Brandon Aiyuk, and he took off during the opening phases of training camp.
Yet injuries to both Samuel (foot) and Aiyuk (hamstring) have put both players’ availability statuses for Week 1 in doubt. While one should expect both to be available on the 53-man roster, depth concerns and other camp standouts at the position could shake things up between now and when San Francisco is forced to trim its 80-man offseason roster down to 53 players.
For now, the 49ers’ wide receiver room in camp looks like this:
- Brandon Aiyuk*
- Tavon Austin
- Kendrick Bourne
- River Cracraft
- Jalen Hurd
- Richie James
- Jauan Jennings*
- J.J. Nelson
- Dante Pettis
- Shawn Poindexter
- Deebo Samuel
- Trent Taylor
- Kevin White*
* denotes rookie
James was dealing with a broken wrist. Despite initially being expected to be shelved on an injury list for the first six weeks of the regular season, the Niners have since activated him from the non-football injury list.
Hurd, meanwhile, tore his ACL and is already on injured reserve with fellow wideout J.J. Nelson and Tavon Austin.
As far as who else makes the cut and why, Niner Noise explores how the wide receiver room pans out once training camp comes to a close.
Starting off with who won’t make the cut.