5 questions SF 49ers must answer before 2021 NFL Draft
By Peter Panacy
No. 4: What do SF 49ers do about Weston Richburg?
Back in 2018, San Francisco invested some serious free-agent money in veteran center Weston Richburg, and that investment didn’t exactly prove beneficial last season.
Richburg missed all of 2020 after suffering a serious knee injury late in 2019, which held him out for the duration of the SF 49ers’ Super Bowl run that year. And while there was hope he could return last season, Richburg ultimately sat out the entire year recovering.
In turn, the Niners endured a carousel of fill-in starters at center, none of which proved to be reliable.
Center is of extreme importance to Kyle Shanahan’s offense, and he’s rarely shied away from going with a proven veteran. But the 2021 draft is awfully deep with quality offensive linemen, particularly along the interior.
Making Richburg a cap casualty won’t be easy. For starters, he has to be fully recovered. And if San Francisco was to cut Richburg before June 1, he’d save the team just $4.5 million in cap space against just under $7 million in dead money. But if the SF 49ers could wait until after June 1 to cut Richburg, they’d save $7.6 million in cap space against only $3.5 million in dead money.
That could be enough time for the Niners to delay signing their 2021 rookie class, but Shanahan would likely have to be comfortable going with a Tier 2 option at center, likely a first-year player in that case.