Robert Saleh and Brant Boyer have brought over players from the Jets whom they are confident can help the team.
Defensive coordinator Robert Saleh and special teams coordinator Brant Boyer have added three former members of the New York Jets to the San Francisco 49ers in about a week.
Initially, the most significant move came when the Niners released Mitch Wishnowsky earlier this week in a move that was mildly surprising after an injury-plagued season that saw him have one of the lowest averages of any punter in the NFL. In fact, Wishnowsky had the seventh-lowest average of any punter in the league during the past decade.
Some believed Wishnowsky was let go due to chronic back issues. However, head coach Kyle Shanahan said the decision to release Wishnowsky was not health-related:
“He is healthy. So, he’s going to go to a team and help a team out a lot. But those are things you’ve always got to predict. You don’t know how those things go, and you’ve got to take the risk-reward and something that to me wasn’t a big risk or worth the risk until someone like Morstead becomes available. And that put us on where we needed to make a decision.”
Wishnowsky hadn’t missed a game since joining the 49ers in 2019 up until last season. The injury, paired with his stats and inconsistencies, made Mitch expendable in the eyes of Boyer.
Shanahan said that Thomas Morstead becoming available and his familiarity with Boyer ultimately led to Wishnowsky’s release:
“Well, I mean he definitely has the most expertise in the building. So, I always tend to lean towards whoever has the most expertise. But it’s got to make sense. We’ve all got to agree with it. And it was really hard to cut ties with [P] Mitch [Wishnowsky]. I love Mitch. He’s one of my favorite guys I’ve been around, especially from a special team standpoint and punter standpoint. He’s such a football player in how he plays. The guys love him. But when you just look into contract situations, how last year went and things, the fact that [P Thomas] Morstead became available, [special teams coordinator] Brant [Boyer] being so familiar with him and having that relationship, it ended up making it a decision that wasn’t easy, but we felt all confident it was best for our team.”
The second former Jet the Niners brought over is Chazz Surratt, who played a decent amount in 2024. Surratt played on four different special teams units and played 113 snaps on defense. His season high defensively was 19 snaps in a game.
To his credit, when Surratt played, he was around the ball. He had four tackles in two separate games. Saleh selected Surratt during his first NFL Draft as a head coach in the third round, suggesting Surratt has a better chance of contributing with the 49ers than one would think of a player signed after Memorial Day.
However, Surratt is on the smaller side. When he entered the league, he was in the sixth percentile for weight and third percentile for arm length. But his 4.59 40-yard dash (92nd percentile) and 4.18 20-yard shuttle (82nd percentile) give the 49ers, at worst, a speedy threat on special teams.
And last but certainly not least, the pending trade for Bryce Huff. It feels as though we’ve been talking about the potential of Huff joining the Niners for a couple of seasons now, as recently as the 2024 trade deadline.
Huff was a miscast in Vic Fangio’s defense. In 2023, Huff’s winning percentage as a pass rusher was third in the NFL and a single percentage point better than Nick Bosa’s. He was a part-time player in New York under Saleh. The Eagles tried to play Huff every down, only to see his snap counts decrease each week during the first month of the season.
With the 49ers, Huff won’t be thrust into a position where he’ll need to play the run. San Francisco used the 2025 NFL Draft to solve their run-stopping woes. Huff allows Mykel Williams to slide inside on obvious passing downs and gives Saleh a Wide-9 threat.
Huff is a low-risk trade by a team with ample cap space. Before the trade, the 49ers were second in the NFL in effective cap space with over $45 million. Adding Huff for just under $8 million in 2025 pays dividends by allowing Williams to stay on the field and learn by trial and error without exposing Huff to the run.
It’s probably not a good sign for Yetur Gross-Matos, a player who struggled with injury in 2024. Those two will fight for snaps on passing downs. It’s a good problem to have, and one the Niners would have loved to have last season when their depth was depleted along the defensive line.