A day after finalizing their initial 53-man roster (which has unshockingly already undergone several changes), the San Francisco 49ers got to work on Wednesday filling out their practice squad.
While the Niners only officially announced 13 signings on Wednesday (each team is allowed 16 players, 17 if one is part of the league's International Player Pathway Program), not one of them was a quarterback.
However, when general manager John Lynch was asked by NBC Sports Bay Area about the situation, he confirmed that San Francisco did indeed have a quarterback set to join the practice squad on Thursday, that being 25-year-old Adrian Martinez, who was cut by the New York Jets earlier this week and will now serve as the 49ers' QB3 behind Brock Purdy and Mac Jones.
San Francisco waived Carter Bradley and Tanner Mordecai ahead of finalizing the 53-man roster. Each was waived with an injury designation, went unclaimed, and subsequently landed on the Niners' injured reserve list. And with rookie Kurtis Rourke still on the NFI list after undergoing surgery to repair a torn ACL, Purdy and Jones were left as the only healthy QBs, hence the need for Martinez.
Undrafted out of Kansas State in 2023, Martinez was signed by the Detroit Lions but was waived during final cuts in late August.
That December, he was signed by the UFL's Birmingham Stallions and went on to win the league's regular-season Most Valuable Player award in 2024, completing 58.5% of his passes for 1,750 yards with 15 touchdowns against just three interceptions, adding another 530 yards and three scores on the ground.
He then accounted for 140 total yards of offense and three touchdowns, one through the air and two on the ground, in the Stallions' 25-0 victory over the San Antonio Brahmas in the UFL Championship Game, taking MVP honors there as well.
Martinez was signed by the Jets roughly six weeks later but was waived during final cuts before re-signing with the team as a member of the practice squad. The 6-foot-3, 220-pounder signed a reserve/future contract with Gang Green back in January, but after a preseason in which he earned just a 70.1 passer rating after completing only 30 of 51 passes for 352 yards with one touchdown and two interceptions, the Jets decided to move on.
Like the Niners, New York kept only two QBs on its initial 53-man roster, those being starter Justin Fields and veteran Tyrod Taylor.
One would assume that the only way Martinez will ever see any regular-season action in San Francisco would be in an absolute emergency kind of a situation. And given how badly the Niners have been bitten by the injury bug this year, he should undoubtedly keep himself ready for anything.