It would surely shakeup the offseason, but maybe that’s where the 49ers are headed.
The San Francisco 49ers seem headed for their first missed playoff appearance since the 2020 season. After Sunday’s embarrassing 38-10 loss to the Packers, the injury-depleted Niners are buried in the standings and on the wrong side of several potentially key tiebreakers. Barring an unexpected late-season surge, the 49ers front office will have some difficult decisions to make.
ESPN NFL Insider Dan Graziano speculated about one potential franchise-altering move in a list of “Possible surprise cut, trade candidates.” Graziano pondered whether superstar wide receiver Deebo Samuel could be a potential cap casualty this offseason.
An integral part of the 49ers’ success during the Kyle Shanahan era, Samuel stands as an example of the difficult decisions San Francisco will confront in the spring. The team signed Brandon Aiyuk to a big-money contract extension before this season, extended Jauan Jennings earlier in the offseason and drafted Ricky Pearsall in the first round. So the Niners have spent considerable resources on their future at the wide receiver position. That leads one to believe Samuel could be the odd man out as they start to transition from their Super Bowl-caliber core into the future.
Samuel is scheduled to make a little under $17 million next season, but the vast majority of that is included in a non-guaranteed bonus that does not become guaranteed until the 10th day of the league year. The Niners could hypothetically avoid paying that by trading or releasing Samuel prior to that date.
The one complication, San Francisco has already structured Samuel’s contract to maximize previous cap savings, meaning they are scheduled to take on significant dead money once his contract ends. Releasing or trading Samuel would accelerate that process, putting more than $30 million in dead money on their books. Currently, they are scheduled to take that hit when Samuel’s contract expires following the 2025 season.
In other words, the 49ers would actually lose cap space by trading Samuel. Releasing him would do the same thing unless they utilized a post-June 1st designation, which would split the dead money between the 2025 and 2026 league years. The Niners would immediately create about $5 million in salary cap space and lessen their long-term commitments. Of course, that seems like a minor gain for someone capable of Samuel’s impact.
There’s no doubt that Samuel has struggled with consistency throughout his career, and he’s currently on pace to finish another season short of 1,000 yards receiving. However, it seems like the 49ers have a much larger incentive to try and come up with an extension for Samuel that allows them to keep him in San Francisco and spread out his dead money.
Perhaps Samuel thinks he can still command a contract with an AAV worth north of $20 million, but it seems like both sides could benefit from a three or four-year extension that paid him around $8-$15 million a season in salary and included some guarantees to compensate the oft-injured Samuel to accept a lower AAV.
Then again, maybe 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan should be more aggressively looking to shake up the core of the team. What do you think about the prospect of cutting Samuel loose this offseason? Let us know in the comments below!