You can tell the San Francisco 49ers’ decision-makers love their 2024 draft class just by noticing how many reps those rookies are getting every day in practice with the regular season just a blink or two away, by realizing the responsibilities they’ve already been given, and, officially on Tuesday afternoon, by the decisions the 49ers made on the big cut down to the 53-man roster limit.
You can also conclude that the 49ers’ decision-makers really, really needed this draft class to hit big and early. It’s a bit too much to say that Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch were symbolically turning away from the 2021, 2022 and 2023 draft classes on Tuesday, but they sure were acknowledging something general with the cuts they made and the 2024 draftees they’ve immediately placed into key roles.
Let’s just go through the raw data:
• Seven of the eight 2024 draftees made the cut, the only discard being sixth-round pick Jarrett Kingston, who figures to be asked to stick around on the practice squad as interior offensive line depth.
• Third-round pick Dominick Puni seems all but certain to be the team’s Week 1 right guard, a rare rookie starter on a Shanahan offense; second-round pick Renardo Green is likely the main backup at slot corner, fourth-round pick Malik Mustapha could get snaps at safety; fellow fourth-rounder Isaac Guerendo is the third running back and also the kickoff returner; another fourth-round pick, Jacob Cowing, should get snaps as a backup receiver and is the punt returner; and seventh-round pick Tatum Bethune is a backup linebacker.
And that’s not counting first-round pick Ricky Pearsall, who has missed a ton of camp time with two minor injuries but still figures to get snaps as a backup receiver and possibly could do some kick returning.
• The 49ers cut three of the remaining members of the nine-man 2023 draft class (Cam Latu, Brayden Willis and Jalen Graham); that class still has six players currently on the roster, but only third-rounders J’Ayir Brown and Jake Moody have significant roles.
GO DEEPER
49ers 53-man roster analysis: Talanoa Hufanga comes off PUP; still waiting on Trent Williams
• The 49ers cut two of the remaining members of the nine-man 2022 draft class (Danny Gray and Samuel Womack); that class only has three members on the current active roster (Spencer Burford, Nick Zakelj and oh yeah, some seventh-round pick named Brock Purdy) and only one of those guys has a major role. I believe he wears No. 13.
More to Tuesday’s point: Pearsall and Cowing easily moved ahead of Gray; Green was given his spot ahead of Womack before camp even began and showed he deserved it; and Puni took the starting RG spot when Burford suffered a broken finger, but it was pretty clear through camp that Puni was likely to win that spot outright, anyway.
The 2024 class just about wiped out the 2022 class (except for Purdy, of course) for this cutdown and absolutely for the future.
• The 49ers’ eight-man 2021 draft class will always be remembered and slighted for Trey Lance taken at the top, but Aaron Banks, Jaylon Moore, Deommodore Lenoir, Talanoa Hufanga and Elijah Mitchell (surprisingly put on season-ending IR on Tuesday) have been fairly-to-majorly important over the last few years and remain valued by the 49ers.
Still, that’s only three players from the 2021 class in major roles right now (Banks, Lenoir and Hufanga, with Moore as a big upward possibility this season stepping in for Trent Williams as long as Williams holds out). Plus one from 2022. And two from 2023. A total of six key performers in three drafts. Not good NFL math. Those are the draft classes that should be moving up the 49ers’ depth chart and giving them youth and great depth, but that just hasn’t happened.
The 49ers have sustained a great level of talent because they got lucky with and are maximizing Purdy, they traded for Christian McCaffrey and Trent Williams, signed Javon Hargrave and Charvarius Ward as free agents and have produced a host of stars from the pre-2021 draft classes, from Nick Bosa to Deebo Samuel to Brandon Aiyuk to George Kittle to Fred Warner.
But this aging, top-heavy roster desperately needed a major infusion of cheap young talent. You can write Puni down as a starter for the next five years. Pearsall and Cowing could be main targets for Purdy by 2026 at the latest. Green could eventually replace either Lenoir or Ward, who are both set to hit free agency next March. Guerendo is a fascinating change-of-pace RB behind McCaffrey and Jordan Mason and theoretically could be RB1 by 2026 or 2027. Mustapha is going to have a career in this league.
Fourth-round pick Malik Mustapha is part of a dynamic-looking 2024 draft class that has earned its place on the 49ers’ roster. (Kirby Lee / USA Today)
If the 49ers didn’t have this draft class, whew, things would be looking awfully thin in the middle of the roster right now.
That’s a lot of projecting this early in all their careers, but it’s the kind of forward leap that you just couldn’t make with the 49ers’ last few draft classes up and down the line. Yes, the 49ers didn’t have first-round picks in 2022 and 2023 due to the Lance trade in 2021, but putting all three drafts together, there just wasn’t enough talent making it to the 49ers’ roster.
And if you want to note that this haul was produced in the first draft after former general manager Adam Peters’ departure for Washington, when the scouting and analyzing was done by Tariq Ahmad and R.J. Gillen, I don’t think the 49ers’ executive team would mind that at all. As Lynch said after the draft, the 49ers have had many very talented scouts and evaluators throughout this era, and losing Peters wasn’t going to crash all that. It clearly didn’t.
More notes on the 49ers’ roster after cutdown day …
• If you want to infer anything about the Aiyuk and Williams situations from the roster makeup, you’d probably conclude that the 49ers are feeling better about getting Williams signed and into camp soon than they are about getting a new deal for Aiyuk. The 49ers were allowed to keep Williams on the reserve list because he hasn’t reported to camp, but they very notably kept the tackle spot quite light, going only with starting RT Colton McKivitz and placeholder LT Moore. That’s it.
They can bring back Brandon Parker or Chris Hubbard, but going this spare at such a key position does seem to suggest that the 49ers feel OK about their tackles for Week 1. They wouldn’t feel that way unless they feel relatively comfortable about the timing on Williams.
But on the flip side, the 49ers went heavy at WR, keeping seven guys (Ronnie Bell is probably the extra guy), largely because Aiyuk has reported and must count on the 53-man roster. Of course, if you want to protect against Aiyuk either continuing his holdout until Week 1 or signing soon but not able to ramp up in time to play, you would want an extra WR. Especially with Pearsall a question mark.
• For the first time I can remember in the Shanahan/Lynch era, their defensive secondary talent and depth is close to or even equivalent to the talent and depth of the 49ers’ defensive line. This is not on purpose, by the way. Shanahan and Lynch always believe that defensive line is the most important position to acquire and accumulate premium talent. But Arik Armstead wouldn’t take a pay cut, so they released him last spring. Drake Jackson hasn’t been able to stay healthy. Javon Kinlaw was a bust. We don’t know how Leonard Floyd, Yetur Gross-Matos, Maliek Collins and Jordan Elliott will do in their first years with the 49ers. They’ve got Bosa, but they’ve got less top-level talent around him than usual.
Meanwhile, the 49ers have four solid corners (Ward, Lenoir, Isaac Yiadom and Green) and four solid safeties (Brown, Hufanga, Mustapha and George Odum). I can’t remember the last time when the 49ers went eight deep in the secondary without getting to a questionable name. And if you count some of the depth on the corners, they could go to nine or 10 deep with this backfield group.
GO DEEPER
Kawakami Mailbag, Part 2: All 49ers and their tricky negotiations
(Photo of Dominick Puni during a preseason game against the New Orleans Saints: Thearon W. Henderson / Getty Images)
