49ers roster: 3 biggest individual weaknesses heading into 2022

The 49ers don’t have a ton of holes on their roster heading into 2022, but there are some notable concerns on both sides of the ball.

The San Francisco 49ers are making a massive transition entering 2022, changing the guard under center from veteran quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo to the second-year pro, Trey Lance.

That’s massive. Anytime a team shakes up the most important position in football for the long run, it’ll garner plenty of understandable attention, and there’s going to be the inevitable unknowns until Lance either proves himself worthy of the No. 3 overall NFL Draft pick a year ago or completely flames out.

This hardly means the Niners’ quarterback situation is a weakness, though.

If Lance winds up being just a Garoppolo-like “OK” under center, San Francisco is still stacked enough to legitimately contend for a playoff berth.

However, there are some other notable transitions for the 49ers that create some awfully serious question marks heading into 2022. And while going from one player to another always creates these kinds of question marks, albeit less high-profile than at quarterback, they nevertheless need to be evaluated and discussed.

Here are three individual spots on the depth chart that are of the utmost concern heading into training camp.

49ers concern No. 3: Nickel cornerback

The Niners lost one of the better nickel cornerbacks in the NFL this offseason, K’Waun Williams, who departed via free agency to the Denver Broncos.

Sure, maybe Williams saw a slight regression in 2021, but it’s not as if San Francisco had a well-established contingency plan in place.

And, no, second-year pro Deommodore Lenoir wasn’t the answer. He played almost exclusively on the boundary in college at Oregon before struggling in the second half in limited duty his rookie season in the NFL.

The 49ers do have other options, though, including Darqueze Dennard who saw the majority of first-team reps during organized team activities and in mandatory minicamp. Reports suggest, though, Dennard wasn’t exactly equal to the task, so there’s a good chance the Niners’ fifth-round rookie, Samuel Womack, winds up being a day-one rookie starter in this spot.

Womack does draw a lot of initial comparisons to Williams, so that’s a good thing. Yet it’s important to acknowledge many a first-year defensive back will struggle mightily transitioning to the pro level.

That’ll be a point of concern until proven otherwise.