3 players SF 49ers may regret cutting in 2020

The majority of the SF 49ers’ cuts to get down to the 53 man roster made sense, yet these three cuts could eventually come back to haunt Kyle Shanahan.

For the most part, all the SF 49ers‘ roster cuts leading up to the 4 p.m. ET deadline on Saturday, Sept. 4 made sense.

Head coach Kyle Shanahan’s squad didn’t have a lot of room for new faces or players on the fringes of the roster. After all, the Niners were retaining 18 of 22 offensive and defensive starters from last season’s Super Bowl squad, and there were arguably only seven or eight spots on the 53-man roster up for grabs. Many of these were reserve or depth roles only, too.

And the majority of those positions ended up going to players most anticipated would be there in the first place.

Still, no 53-man roster is perfect. Shanahan himself has repeatedly said an initial regular-season roster won’t look anything like what the team fields in Week 17 and hopefully into the playoffs.

So, with that as a backdrop, are there going to be roster-cut moves Shanahan and Co. eventually come to regret?

Sure, it’s entirely possible. San Francisco already has a number of positions where depth is an issue. And given the SF 49ers were already loaded on their roster at a number of other positions, it was only inevitable Shanahan was giving up on some talent that could end up providing substantial impact elsewhere, either in this season or at some point down the road.

For now, however, Shanahan will have to hope his decisions were the best ones. And for the most part, they were the right ones, too.

Yet these three player cuts could end up being ones Shanahan, in time, will come to regret.

Note: Teams can protect up to four of their practice squad players from being signed to other teams’ 53-man rosters, meaning not everyone is safe from being plucked away.