The 49ers have issues at wide receiver. Will this crew catch on to Shanahan’s offense?
The 49ers managed to win four consecutive games early in 2019 without starting tackles Joe Staley and Mike McGlinchey.
Can they do the same without key receivers in 2020?
That could one be of the biggest questions heading into the new season for the defending NFC champs. Top wideout Deebo Samuel is iffy for Week 1 after breaking his foot in June, Jalen Hurd was lost for the season this week with a torn ACL and top return man Richie James Jr. could begin the year on the non-football injury list with a broken wrist.
All those issues compound the fact the team lost last season’s top wideout, Emmanuel Sanders, to the New Orleans Saints in free agency.
Comparing receivers to offensive linemen is far from an apples-to-apples exercise. But coach Kyle Shanahan has proven to be adaptable as a designer of offense. Creating a scheme that masks issues at receiver is a challenge his run-first scheme could likely handle.
From Weeks 5 to 8 last season, Shanahan devised a quick-hitting passing attack while replacing Staley and McGlinchey, two former first-round draft choices, with less heralded prospects Justin Skule and Daniel Brunskill. Skule was a rookie sixth-round draft choice and Brunskill had to be plucked from the defunct Allegiance of American Football.
The plan was to move the pocket or get rid of the ball quickly, negating the chances Skule and Brunskill would get isolated against defensive ends on long-developing pass plays. But making changes to compensate for injured receivers could be far more daunting.
The good news this year, when it comes to receivers, is the 49ers conceivably have more talented options as fill-ins. Recent first-round draft pick Brandon Aiyuk has hit the ground running and been a featured member of the first-team offense during full-team drills. His explosiveness has been evident and his early knowledge of the offense has helped earn him reps with the starters.
“Brandon’s still got a lot to learn, a lot to go, but these practices are huge for a rookie,” Shanahan said Thursday. “We’re expecting him to play a lot this year, just like we were expecting Deebo and Jalen last year. When it’s that way, you’ve got a lot of pressure on you, so you can’t miss a day or you get behind and he’s doing (well) both mentally and physically.”
A former second-round pick, Dante Pettis, appears to have picked himself off the mat following his disappointing 2019 and has been a noticeably different player. It’s not just that Pettis made a handful of catches in team drills on Tuesday and has been more productive overall — there’s an apparent attitude shift after he had been criticized for not playing with enough zest last season.
“He was one of the guys that I was looking forward to talking to the most,” Shanahan said Thursday. “When he came in, I saw him right away when he came in and we got to talk. You could just tell his mindset, how his body was, that he spent the time away from us doing everything he could to put himself in a position to make this team and to be as successful as he can be.”
Other guys are also stepping up
There’s also Kendrick Bourne, who has caught multiple touchdown passes on each day the team has done red-zone drills. Bourne is the former undrafted free agent in 2017 who has a knack for making important catches. Twenty-three of his 30 receptions last season went for either first downs or touchdowns. All 12 of his catches on third down moved the chains.
However, there’s no experience like game experience and between Pettis, Aiyuk, Bourne and Trent Taylor, who is also back after missing last season, no healthy 49ers receiver in the last three years has posted more than Bourne’s 487 yards in 2018.
The 49ers might be facing a scenario where they hit the trade market in the middle of the season like they did last year, when they acquired Sanders. The problem is they need to hoard draft picks and not trade them away given how many players are now on lucrative contracts.
Aiyuk was asked Thursday about the urgency he’s approaching the season with knowing Shanahan has expectations to make him a key part of the offense on a team with aspirations to return to the Super Bowl.
“That’s just something I want to do on my own is come in and have that sense of urgency and just be urgent in everything that I do,” Aiyuk said. “That’s something (position coach Wes Welker) talks about is just being urgent on the football field. From the snap, get off the ball and just having that urgency in everything that I do.”
The 49ers have been busy filling the spots at receiver vacated by injuries during the first week of camp. They signed disappointing former first-round pick Tavon Austin to potentially help in the return game. They also added J.J. Nelson and Jaron Brown. Those three players have 16 years of experience in the NFC West combined.
That could come in handy even if they don’t make the team. New rules stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic have allowed practice squads to grow from 10 to 16 and six of those spots can be filled by players with unlimited NFL experience. Which means for the first time teams could have veterans at their disposal rather than inexperienced youngsters.
“Usually when guys go down, you bring some guys off the street because not always are practice squad players ready to play,” Shanahan said. “But when you have the ability to keep some of those guys, if it works out that way and other teams don’t take them, it’s a huge deal for us and a huge deal for everyone else around the league.”
This story was originally published August 21, 2020 at 4:00 AM.
