Jauan Jennings has a ways to go to make 49ers 53-man roster

The 49ers’ seventh-round pick from the 2020 NFL Draft, Jauan Jennings, benefits from no additional drafted receivers in 2021, but he still has a lot to prove.

Many thought the San Francisco 49ers were getting a steal when they selected former Tennessee wide receiver Jauan Jennings in Round 7 of the 2020 NFL Draft.

If it weren’t for an absolutely sluggish 4.72 40-yard time during that year’s NFL Scouting Combine, Jennings could have easily been a day-two pick. Particularly after he broke 29 tackles on 59 receptions his senior year.

But after a lackluster training camp, where Jennings failed to impress with his route-running skills and had more focus drops than anything else, the rookie wideout found himself placed on the practice squad and never once cracked the Niners’ regular-season roster despite a slew of injuries the team suffered at the position over the course of a dreadful 2020 campaign.

Jennings, too, suffered a hamstring injury after being placed on the practice squad. And as head coach Kyle Shanahan later pointed out, that injury prevented Jennings from any midseason call-up:

"It was tough because he was doing really good in practice and definitely would have ended up helping us this year. But he pulled his hamstring really bad – as bad as anyone we’ve had this year. It was about a six-week injury. It’s been unfortunate because he would have had some opportunities here with the way things have gone."

San Francisco elected not to draft a wide receiver in 2021, only adding one rookie, UAB wide receiver Austin Watkins, as an undrafted free agent this spring.

This surely benefits Jennings, although he still has quite a journey ahead of him if he hopes to somehow crack the back end of the 49ers roster.

Jauan Jennings will need to show focus, establish strength during training camp

Jennings wasn’t alone in his relatively lackluster first-year efforts in training camp last year.

The COVID-19 pandemic effectively canceled all on-field minicamps and OTAs, resorting to players having to participate in online meetings and thereby missing out on those valuable muscle-memory exercises so inherent in a young player’s development.

It’s anyone’s guess just how much this could have affected Jennings, as it didn’t seem to be an issue for another Niners rookie receiver, Brandon Aiyuk, who even missed a large chunk of training camp because of injury.

But it’s a pretty easy conclusion to suggest Jennings wasn’t aided by missing those pre-camp programs.

Unlike last year, there will be an uptick in San Francisco’s offseason workouts, so Jennings may have that extra chance to hone his route-running techniques while flashing that extra strength he displayed so frequently during his playing days with the Volunteers.

Competing with him for one of five, perhaps six spots at the position on the 49ers’ 53-man roster will be players like Watkins, Jalen Hurd, Mohamed Sanu, Trent Sherfield and Travis Benjamin, among others, meaning it won’t be an easy task. And while the lack of 2021 wide receiver additions spells a slightly easier path for Jennings to make the cut, he still has quite a ways to go before being named to the roster.