SANTA CLARA — One week left, dozens of decisions still to be sorted through.
By 3 p.m. next Sunday, coach Kyle Shanahan and general manager John Lynch must trim their roster from the 90 in training camp to the 53 who will open the season.
Three days later, they will board a 16-hour flight to Melbourne, Australia.
“I can’t even think about that yet,” defensive coordinator Raheem Morris said Saturday, after the team began its final week of practice stateside with position battles still to be determined.
“There’s a lot of guys doing really good things. … There are a lot of really good things on this football team and really hard decisions for our management, our coaches, everybody involved.”
Some decisions will be easier than others.
These are five questions 49ers brass will think about going into cutdown day:
Do they need outside help on the offensive line?
Not talking about the tackles, where the 49ers are as sturdy as any team in football with Trent Williams holding down the left edge and Colton McKivitz on the opposite side.
But they just might need to look outside the organization for help on the inside.
“No one’s really completely made it easy on us yet,” Shanahan said this week of the competition to start at left guard. “I still think we’ve got a lot more time to go, not a ton, but enough for guys to step up and do it.”
It wasn’t necessarily a ringing endorsement of the field competing for the job that the 49ers decided to bring a fourth entrant into the mix Thursday night against the Chargers.
Austen Pleasants started the game at left tackle but ended up taking almost as many snaps at left guard. Connor Colby was considered the front-runner coming into camp but took most of his snaps at right guard as he seems to now be fighting for a second-string swingman position.
Given the underwhelming showing from the other three and Pleasants’ late entrance to the battle, he might have been in pole position for the starting job in Week 1.
But he left with a non-ACL knee injury that the 49ers needed to do further imaging on. Robert Jones, a veteran free agent also in the running, left with an unspecified injury that Shanahan said will also keep him out of their final preseason game this week.
That leaves rookie Carver Willis, a fourth-round pick who played exclusively tackle in college at Washington and Kansas State. He also missed a week early in camp with a concussion, which Shanahan said put him “a little behind the 8-ball.”
But he was the one who started at left guard Thursday and logged the most snaps (42).
“When you go inside, there’s a lot more going on schematically and stuff like that. That’s one of the things we liked about him,” Shanahan said of Willis. “It’s going to go down to the wire. It seemed like both of those guys [Willis and Pleasants] did good today.”
Who will and who won’t be ready for Week 1?
The biggest variable that will shape the 49ers’ roster is availability.
Mykel Williams and Isaac Guerendo seem likely to take their Physically Unable to Perform designations into the regular season, ruling them out for the first four games but alleviating some stress on 49ers decision-makers, who will have two extra roster spots to play with.
George Kittle, on the other hand, is adamant that he will avoid the PUP list. But he still hasn’t practiced and won’t necessarily be ready for the season opener less than three weeks away.
The trickiest situations involve veterans brought in to play important roles but have been unable to stay on the field. The 49ers will be able to place two players currently on the roster on injured reserve with the ability to return after four weeks, but they may have to decide between Christian Kirk (calf), Brett Toth (concussion), Vederian Lowe (ankle) and Nate Hobbs (groin).
The good news is that Kittle, Christian McCaffrey and Nick Bosa all appear to be trending in the right direction.
Is there room for a punt return specialist?
The receiver room is crowded, especially if the Niners decide to carry Kirk on the 53-man roster. Perhaps that’s one reason we saw Deebo Samuel back deep on two punts Thursday night.
Samuel is already listed as the No. 1 kick returner, but he’s never returned a punt in his NFL career. In a world without Jacob Cowing or Jordan Watkins, he might be their best option.
It might not come to that if one of them can prove to be a real difference-maker on special teams, like Cowing did with his 83-yard punt return touchdown.
It was the first time a 49ers punt returner had taken one to the house since 2011. Cowing served as their punt returner in 2024. Was it enough for the small, shifty slot receiver to lock up a roster spot?
“Not yet,” Shanahan said. “But, I like that he’s making it [the decision] a little easier.”
How does the linebacking corps shake out?
It’s Fred Warner, Dre Greenlaw and everybody else.
Within that second tier, fifth-round rookie Jaden Dugger seems to have pushed past fellow long, athletic linebackers Larry Worth III and Jalen Graham for the starting job on the strong side.
That’s where he started Thursday night, alongside Tatum Bethune and Nick Martin, Warner and Greenlaw’s two likely backups. That’s hardly set in stone, though, as the 49ers have liked what they’ve seen from Garret Wallow, and they have to find space for Luke Gifford, who has missed most of camp with a hamstring injury but was a Pro Bowler on special teams last season.
What about safety and defensive tackle?
There isn’t much mystery about the starters, or even most of the second-stringers, at these positions. Osa Odighizuwa has looked like a monster inside, and either Marques Sigle or Malik Mustapha will start opposite Ji’Ayir Brown in the secondary, depending on Mustapha’s health.
But some of the final roster decisions will be made at these spots further down the depth chart.
Keep an eye on Sebastian Valdez, James Thompson Jr. and Bryson Eason in the battle to join Odighizuwa, Alfred Collins, CJ West and Gracen Halton on the interior defensive line. Thompson, an undrafted rookie out of Illinois, has been a camp standout and graded out as the 49ers’ top pass rusher and run defender against the Chargers, per Pro Football Focus.
The fourth safety is likely to come down to Siran Neal, a special teams standout last season, or Ashtyn Davis, who also has a strong case to make on special teams, given that he played under coordinator Brant Boyer for four seasons with the Jets.
