The San Francisco 49ers lost another piece of their offensive core when Deebo Samuel went down with a hamstring injury against the Seattle Seahawks in Week 5. Samuel, 30, had been looking to hit the edge before pulling up and fumbling on a non-contact play.
He’ll now miss a few weeks, only adding to the injury bug that San Francisco is facing at receiver. The 49ers have now lost Ricky Pearsall, De’Zhaun Stribling, Christian Kirk, Demarcus Robinson, Samuel, and Khadarel Hodge all to injuries for some period of time.
The 49ers trotted out Brandin Cooks for the first time, while Jacob Cowing played a heavy number of snaps behind Mike Evans. Additionally, we saw Jordan Watkins get 22 snaps as well. Right now, those three are the team’s top depth after Evans, who is still recovering in his own right from a painful rib injury.
What is the 49ers plan at receiver without Samuel?
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“Well, yeah, with Deebo out, we have five guys on the roster and Deebo being out, that would be four,” head coach Kyle Shanahan said about his receivers. So the next guys up to get activated would be one of the three guys on practice squad. Because also in that game Jake went down with an ankle. He ended up being all right, but the numbers got low real quick. That’s why we always like to get five up for game day. We’ve got four guys on our roster, so we’ll most likely decide on one of those guys throughout the week.”
Currently, the 49ers have three receivers on their practice squad: Wesley Grimes, Will Pauling, and Xavier Smith. So will they look for more reinforcements during the week? Shanahan doesn’t believe so, at least for now.
“I think we have enough,” Shanahan added. “We’ve got three guys on practice squad also who can help. Anytime you lose this number of guys, four guys or five guys whatever it is, it’s a huge challenge. But, we do have guys in this building who can do it and we’ll always look.”
The 49ers, and other teams in the NFL, usually have five or six receivers, with one potentially being inactive on game day. San Francisco doesn’t even have the five healthy bodies on their 53-man roster, let alone a sixth.
So, until players come back, it could be a significant dose of Mike Evans, as it was on Sunday when he had seven catches for 113 yards and a touchdown. The 49ers face the Washington Commanders and Atlanta Falcons over the next two weeks before their bye, giving them a chance to start 7-0 as the league’s best team.
But for that to happen, they’ll have to figure something more out at receiver, as they’ve really struggled to get much production out of the position the last few weeks.