The 49ers face a few difficult questions on their roster heading into the offseason. One of them is how they’ll handle wide receiver Marquise Goodwin’s future. NFL Media’s Ian Rapoport reported the team is exploring trade options for the receiver, and head coach Kyle Shanahan said at the combine the team was open to trading him.
What might the team get for Goodwin though? And would it even be worth dealing him?
The return on the 2017 version of Goodwin, his first year in San Francisco, would’ve been decent. He had 56 catches for 962 yards and two touchdowns that season. It’s the only time in his career he’s played 16 games.
His two seasons after that weren’t as productive as he dealt with various injuries that kept him from ever getting rolling the way he did in his first season with the club. Across 20 games, he had 35 receptions for 581 yards and five touchdowns.
Therein lies the conundrum with Goodwin. He’s extremely productive when he is on the field. His blazing speed makes him dangerous running vertically and in offenses like Kyle Shanahan’s that generate a ton of open space for receivers to run. However, his ability to stay on the field has been inconsistent throughout his career.
In seven seasons, Goodwin has played in 75 games. 31 of those games came in 2016 and 2017, which means he’s averaged just over eight games a year his other five seasons.
With salary cap hits of $4.9 million and $7.6 million over the next two seasons, it might be tough to trade a player that hasn’t been able to play full 16-game schedules the last two years. And if the 49ers do find a suitor, they’re likely looking at a return of a conditional late-round pick in next year’s draft.
Goodwin is too productive to give away for that, especially since Shanahan at the combine said Goodwin was too valuable to release outright.
What we should see the 49ers do instead is give Goodwin a chance to compete for a roster spot in camp in a receiving corps starving for playmakers. It looks like it’ll be difficult to bring unrestricted free agent Emmanuel Sanders back, and restricted free agent Kendrick Bourne’s return isn’t a slam dunk.
San Francisco could’ve used Goodwin’s speed down the stretch, but knee and foot injuries put him on season-ending Injured Reserve in December last season. It stands to reason that they’ll want another look at him to see if he can stay healthy through camp and win a job.
If he does, they retain a dynamic, field-stretching receiver who has a role in the receiving corps. If he doesn’t, they can explore a trade or outright release him for a $3.6 million salary cap savings in 2020.
Ultimately, the 49ers don’t have enough sure things at receiver to just give Goodwin away for next to nothing on the trade market. He holds enough value that trying to get him back onto the roster makes sense.