The San Francisco 49ers got brutal news with defensive tackle Alfred Collins going down with a season-ending injury in practice ahead of the team’s Week 1 contest in Melbourne.
The injury will have San Francisco regretting a recent roster cut.
The Niners signed undrafted free agent Bryson Eason, who played his college football at the University of Tennessee. There weren’t a ton of expectations for him going into training camp, but he impressed in both training camp and the preseason.
Eason is a big, 6-foot-3, 315-pound defensive tackle. The 24 year old had 4.5 sacks in his career with the Vols, but his size definitely makes one think he could be developed into a good player.
Pro Football Focus was high on him, and the Niners said they signed him thinking he was a guy who could compete for a spot on the 53-man roster to start the season. It seemed especially possible since Collins, who was coming off shoulder surgery, and C.J. West both struggled in training camp and the preseason.
Instead, the 49ers cut Eason after the preseason, and the Kansas City Chiefs swooped in to scoop him up on their practice squad.
Now the 49ers are going to have to scramble to fill the void left by Collins.
49ers letting Bryson Eason go looks like an even bigger mistake
West is going to have to pick up some of the slack, and so will James Thompson, whom the Niners were able to sign to the practice squad and who may be elevated to the active roster after the Collins move.
They may have to sign someone else or swing a trade, but there’s a chance the 49ers will be patient first. We saw last season how general manager John Lynch was not all that aggressive in adding to the defensive line even though San Francisco had a ton of injuries and failed to get much pressure on opposing quarterbacks.
Perhaps Lynch is going to wait until midseason to see if this is a roster worth making a big trade for, or if the 49ers would be better served holding onto draft capital and trying to land a solid rookie to beef up the D-line next year.
Cutting Eason could end up stinging, though. He showed promise in training camp, and if the rookie is able to build on that, he could develop into a solid NFL player.
Roster decisions are tough, and the Niners couldn’t have foreseen losing Collins like this.
But if they could go back in time now, they’d probably would've done things differently.
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