Doing 53-man roster projections before training camp and the preseason is never particularly easy. With the 49ers’ current roster construct it is nigh impossible.
When teams have open battles for starting jobs it’s easier to piece together a depth chart. This San Francisco club has position battles, but most of them come among several players vying for roster spots that typically amount to special teams and reserve roles.
The door is open for a ton of players on the 49ers’ 90-man offseason roster. They’re inevitably going to cut players who should be on NFL rosters, which means leaving players off a 53-man projection is difficult without seeing what they look like in camp and the preseason.
Alas, these are the players who were the most difficult to leave out of our pre-training camp 53-man roster projection: