The 49ers head coach cited a few key contributors on the roster who were once on the practice squad.
San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan has numerous difficult decisions regarding the roster. The team will get wide receiver Ricky Pearsall back at practice on Monday, but several unknowns remain.
A recent injury to Yetur Gross-Matos doesn’t help. Neither does Dee Winters’s knee injury. The 49ers plan on making a decision about Talanoa Hufanga’s decision to start on the PUP before Wednesday’s practice. The fact that he has yet to practice two weeks after the team had hoped for Hufanga’s return date suggests that he’s behind schedule.
Here’s what Shanahan said on Sunday when asked what the biggest challenges are when it comes to cut-down day:
“It’s just connecting all the positions. You have the unknowns with [WR Brandon Aiyuk] B.A. and [T] Trent [Williams] right now. And then we have a lot of good competition at a number of positions, whether to go light in certain places, heavier than some others.”
We’ll go over our 53-man projection next. Some positions will get squeezed due to injury. Others will because of versatility. But just because you’re not on the roster come Wednesday morning doesn’t mean you’re not in the 49ers’ plans down the line.
I asked Shanahan how much he stresses to players when he’s sitting down with them over the next two days about how important it is to know they might get another shot. Kyle cited current contributors who were long-time practice players as examples:
“It’s a huge thing. I always try to make a point of it. One of the things I say a lot is that they talk about it being the final 53, but never in the history of football has the final 53 been the final 53. That’s just the final 53 on Tuesday at one o’clock, I think it is. But after that, it’s always changing.
And you’ve got 53 guys who you decide on then, you’ve got 16 on practice squad. That changes a ton throughout the year. We’ve had guys like [OL] Colton McKivitz on our practice squad, who’s a starter now. [WR] Jauan Jennings, [LB Demetrius] Flannigan-Fowles. We’ve had a lot of guys. [WR] Chris Conley started that way last year, was on our active roster making big plays in the Super Bowl and the playoffs. So, the point is sticking around in this league and finding a way to do it.
Even people don’t get into those situations, I always like to tell people that when we get in binds and you need to get people in the middle of the year, we’d always rather get a person that we know than just some random dude that we don’t. And so even the guys that there isn’t a spot on practice squad, if they handle it here the right way and usually they can make it through camp, that means that there’s something that they can bring. So even if you’re not on one of those 16, you always have a chance with us in the future.”
Projecting the practice squad and which young guys stick over veterans who bring little to the table will make for difficult decisions. We will know the answers to these questions in a little over 30 hours.