The San Francisco 49ers shipped Deebo Samuel out of town this offseason in a trade with the Washington Commanders. They also have no certainty on when veteran wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk will be able to return to the field after he suffered injuries to his ACL and MCL in Week 7 this past season and missed the remainder of the year.
Samuel and Aiyuk have been the focal points of San Francisco's offensive attack from the wide receiver position for years but the Niners will enter the 2025 campaign without the services of both and there are still questions regarding how long Aiyuk's return will take.
“I don’t know,” 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan said at the NFL Annual Meeting,via NBC Sports Bay Area's Matt Maiocco.
“It’s too early to tell. The goal is always early. You hope to have him right away. We were told by his doctor there’s a chance. But it’s too early in the process and we’ll see when we get closer to training camp and see what it looks like.”
With Aiyuk's availability still up in the air, San Francisco had its eyes on taking a big swing on a wide receiver early in the draft, according to Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated. However, they quickly pivoted once they were unable to land highly-coveted playmaker Tetairoa McMillan as the Carolina Panthers snatched him up with the No. 8 overall pick long before the Niners went on the clock at No. 11 and selected edge rusher Mykel Williams out of Georgia.
"And as for McMillan himself, Carolina got hot on the Arizona receiver late in the process, like a lot of other teams did (I’d heard the Jaguars, Raiders, Rams, San Francisco 49ers and Green Bay Packers were all high on him, too). On tape, they saw a guy who was rare in how smooth he was for a player at 6' 4", and a guy who almost always caught the ball with his hands, away from his frame—to the point where they had trouble finding a single example of him catching it with his body."
While John Lynch and San Francisco's brain trust in the front office did ultimately address the receiver position on Day 3 of the NFL Draft by selecting Jordan Watkins out of Ole Miss and FCS standout Junior Bergen of Montana, neither prospect is the type of big-bodied, go-get-it receiver that McMillan is with his size and ball skills.
Fortunately for the 49ers, Aiyuk will return to the fold at some point during the 2025 season but until he does it will be the responsibility of Jauan Jennings, Ricky Pearsall, and Demarcus Robinson to keep things afloat until that happens.