The 49ers face a slew of tough roster decisions heading into the 2020 season, but perhaps the most complicated one is in their very crowded, albeit very talented, running backs room.
Matt Breida on Thursday signed his one-year restricted free agent tender, ensuring he wouldn’t sign with another club in the offseason. The signing put a spotlight on the 49ers’ roster at the running back position and the tangled web of talent the front office has assembled.
Heading into the NFL draft, here’s what the 49ers’ group of running backs looks like:
Raheem Mostert
Matt Breida
Tevin Coleman
Jeff Wilson Jr
Jerick McKinnon
Mostert is the only player in that group signed beyond the 2020 season.
Breida is on a one-year restricted free agent tender. Coleman is on the second year of a two-year deal he signed last offseason. Wilson is on an exclusive rights tender, and McKinnon restructured his contract to effectively make it a one-year deal with an extra year tacked on strictly for spreading out his cap hit.
The only sure thing for the 49ers at running back going into this season is Mostert. While he can be let go without any major salary cap ramifications, he’s valuable as a runner and on special teams and shouldn’t have any trouble keeping his roster spot. Everyone after him is more expendable, but they also serve real roles in the 49ers’ offense.
Breida is a trade candidate, but he’s averaging more than 5.0 yards per carry in his career.
Coleman can be let go with $2 million in dead cap and just over $2.8 million in saving. He spearheaded the rushing attack through the middle part of the season and had a monster divisional playoff game against the Vikings.
Wilson can be released with no dead cap, but he’s the team’s de facto short-yardage and goal line back when he’s active.
McKinnon’s restructure makes him a $2 million cap hit with $910,000 in cap savings if he’s released after June 1. His torn ACL before the 2018 season and complications from it before 2019 have kept him from suiting up for the 49ers in the regular season, but his skill set could allow him to be the team’s top running back if he’s healthy.
With a maximum of four roster spots available for running backs, San Francisco is looking at a numbers issue in the backfield. And that’s without the added wrinkle of the team drafting another running back to ensure they have a player on a cheap contract beyond the 2020 season. That would give them six players for a maximum of four roster spots, and no easy cuts in the group.
Typically moving on from running backs is easy in a modern NFL where the value at that position is steadily declining. It’s not that easy for San Francisco though – a team that ran the ball more than every team but the Ravens last year. They rely too heavily on their deep stable of backs to spearhead the NFL’s second-highest scoring offense.
That group is going to look a little bit different in 2020, and figuring out who stays and who goes is going to be one of the toughest, most important decisions the 49ers coaching staff makes all year.
[vertical-gallery id=655117]