We did underrated yesterday with Jauan Jennings, now who is the most underappreciated player?
Yesterday, we looked at who the most underrated San Francisco 49ers player is. Today, we’ll take that logic to the most underappreciated player. And there is a difference.
The underrated player was Jauan Jennings, and he could also fill the underappreciated column. In the 2025 season, the 49ers were having injuries to weapons left and right, but Jennings continued to follow up with clutch catches and be the go-to for Brock Purdy when other things were not working.
Even when the 49ers had their complete ensemble of wide receivers, Jennings was called “Third and Jauan” for a reason. There’s also the chatter that if the 49ers managed to win the Super Bowl, Jennings could have been the MVP of that game. Maybe there’s more appreciation for him now that the depth chart has been shaken, but it’s a good argument.
Over at NFL.com, Gennaro Filice put together a list of each team’s most underappreciated player. Jennings wasn’t his choice. Instead, it was 49ers’ safety Malik Mustapha.
Having just signed Brock Purdy to a quarterback megadeal, San Francisco is entering a new phase in team-building. Nailing draft picks is always important, obviously, but it becomes essential when you’re committing such a large chunk of the salary cap to one man. In order to balance the books, you need to roster viable starters on cost-controlled rookie contracts. The 49ers found one of those in the fourth round of last year’s draft, with Mustapha immediately making his presence felt as a violent playmaker. Unfortunately, as if the Niners didn’t suffer enough of an injury-riddled Super Bowl hangover last year, we recently discovered that Mustapha hurt his ACL in San Francisco’s season finale. This puts his availability for the start of the 2025 campaign in question. He still gets shine here, though, because I self-consciously feel like I personally underappreciated the safety by completely omitting him from last season’s rookie rankings. This dude’s punishing play style is too endearing to go unrecognized!
I don’t have an argument for Mustapha not being the most underappreciated player. And the way Filice explains how he didn’t have much for rookie rankings also adds to it. I think the big thing for Mustapha is that he had to step in for Talanoa Hufanga. What started as “just hold down the fort” duty for Mustapha turned into the 49ers realizing they could move on from Hufanga entirely—and be fine.
Which, as you know, happened.
I thought Mustapha would need a year as a rookie. With the original plan of just easing Hufanga back in at the start of the 2025 season, I thought the situation was perfect for his rookie season. Obviously, he wound up playing a lot more after Hufanga’s hand injury, and besides his missed tackles early on, it was promising.
The thing is, the 49ers’ defense was not ideal. If the 49ers had not had Mustapha last year, things would have gotten worse, but he was still in what was an underachieving unit. Meanwhile, the 49ers offense had issues but still managed to turn in decent numbers at year’s end—a lot can be credited to Jauan Jennings—and he still hasn’t gotten an extension yet (which might be because he’s out of the 49ers’ price range at this point).
Who do you think is the most underappreciated player on the 49ers?