The 2019 season couldn’t have gone much worse for Dante Pettis. He entered the offseason as the team’s presumed No. 1 receiver, and he finished the year as a healthy scratch in the Super Bowl. His time in San Francisco hasn’t quite run its course though, which is why a proposed trade involving Pettis by ESPN’s Field Yates doesn’t make a ton of sense.
Yates wrote a piece detailing five ‘win-win’ trades around the NFL. One of his proposals involved the 49ers sending Pettis, a 2018 second-round pick, to the Texans in exchange for wide receiver Keke Coutee, a 2018 fourth-round pick.
While neither player has been particularly stellar over two years in the league, a direct swap seems unlikely for a 49ers team that traded up to select Pettis in the 2018 draft. Giving up on him after his second season, when he produced as a rookie, feels premature.
Pettis came on late in his rookie season to finish with 27 catches for 467 yards and five touchdown receptions. He was good enough to earn the inside track for the No. 1 wide receiver job heading into camp in 2019. He disappointed in training camp, and struggled for his entire second season — notching only 109 yards and two touchdowns on 11 receptions. Pettis took nine snaps between Weeks 11 and 12, and didn’t play again the rest of the year.
While his second season was discouraging, the 49ers are more likely to give Pettis another chance to succeed than replace him with an another disappointing prospect. Coutee has played only 15 games in two seasons, with 50 catches, 541 yards and only one touchdown. There aren’t a lot of reasons to believe Coutee would be a more productive player for the 49ers than Pettis, and Pettis’ peak in the NFL was better than Coutee’s, even if Coutee was more consistent with his production.
The more likely scenario for Pettis is the 49ers afford him every chance to climb back to the form he had during a five-week stretch at the end of his rookie season when he had 20 catches for 359 yards and four touchdowns. With Deebo Samuel nursing a broken foot and Richie James Jr. dealing with a broken wrist, Pettis will get plenty of reps outside and in the slot to carve out a more significant role in the 49ers’ receiving corps.
If he doesn’t answer the call this preseason, however, it’s hard to believe the 49ers keep him on the roster. At that point a trade becomes much more conceivable as San Francisco aims to thin out its receiving corps. Until then though, he’ll get a legitimate shot to make the team and have a role in the offense in 2020.
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