5 49ers whose NFL careers may be over if they don’t make 53-man roster

The 49ers have to cut their offseason roster almost in half by Week 1, and these five fringe players may watch their NFL dreams come to an end as a result.

It’s crazy to think that the average NFL career lasts only 3.3 years.

Of course, the data is skewed by the fact an overwhelming number of players wind up getting cut after their first training camp and preseason, never to suit up for another team within the league again.

Even for players who do hang around a little while, there’s always a tenuous hold on an NFL job. One year, a player can be a quality contributor. The next, he might be unsigned en route to never receiving another NFL contract again.

The San Francisco 49ers, just like the remaining 31 other teams across the league, must trim their 90-man offseason roster down to 53 players by Week 1 of the 2022 regular season. Considering the Niners have a playoff-caliber group already, it’s going to be tough for fringe players to survive roster cuts unless they impress significantly during both training camp and the preseason.

So, with San Francisco’s 2022 preseason campaign just days away, let’s explore five players who are at risk of watching their NFL careers come to an end if they fail to make the 53-man roster this year.

No. 5: 49ers defensive lineman Alex Barrett

It’s not surprising to see players on this list who have perennially bounced around on practice squads with the occasional “cup of coffee” on a regular-season roster.

Case in point, defensive lineman Alex Barrett has stayed with the 49ers in one form or another since late in 2019 after similar stints with both the Detroit Lions and Las Vegas Raiders, yet he only managed seven regular-season games with the Niners back during that injury-plagued 2020 season in which they needed him in light of so many others missing substantial time.

Barrett, now 28 years old, now faces a San Francisco D-line competition that added new faces in Hassan Ridgeway, Drake Jackson, Robert Nkemdiche and Kemoko Turay, as well as reuniting with Kerry Hyder, all of whom are depth players who may challenge Barrett for a roster spot.

Considering run-stopping linemen are relatively cheap and easy to find around the league, the prospects for someone like Barrett to land another job if he doesn’t end up surviving cuts seem slim at this stage of his career.