The 49ers are running out of room to breathe at wide receiver, and Ricky Pearsall’s season-ending surgery is the kind of hit that forces a front office to get creative fast. Add Christian Kirk’s lingering calf strain, and San Francisco’s perimeter depth suddenly looks awfully thin in training camp.
That leaves John Lynch with a familiar late-summer problem: patch the roster with veterans, lean on young players who haven’t done much yet, or keep kicking the tires on a reunion that already has plenty of buzz attached to it. The Niners did bring back Deebo Samuel in free agency, but the question now is whether that move is enough to steady things for Brock Purdy.
San Francisco has already started the search process by bringing in three free-agent receivers for workouts, according to the NFL transaction wire. Alex Bachman, De’Wayne Eskridge and Trenton Irwin all came through Santa Clara as the team looks for insurance.
Bachman is the 30-year-old of the group, a 6-foot, 190-pound receiver who spent the 2025 season with the Las Vegas Raiders. His résumé doesn’t jump off the page, but he does bring special teams value and depth.
Eskridge offers a different kind of appeal. The 5-foot-9, 190-pound former Seahawks second-round pick spent the last two seasons in Mike McDaniel’s system and caught seven passes for 106 yards. That background matters because it gives him a shorter learning curve in Kyle Shanahan’s offense.
Irwin is the biggest of the trio at 6-foot-2 and 200 pounds. The Stanford product spent his career with the Cincinnati Bengals and posted 40 catches for 547 yards across the 2022 and 2023 seasons. Of the three workout names, he brings the most obvious boundary presence.
Still, none of those three is being brought in as a Pearsall replacement in any true sense. These are the kinds of roster moves teams make to keep options open, not to solve a major depth chart issue by themselves.
That’s where Samuel comes back into the conversation. He gives the 49ers something their other options do not: total comfort in Shanahan’s scheme and the kind of yards-after-catch production that changes how a defense has to line up. He also has deep ties inside the locker room, especially with George Kittle and Kyle Juszczyk, and he can line up in multiple spots, including the backfield as a hybrid “wide-back” to help spell Christian McCaffrey.
But there are real questions too. Samuel’s history with receiver-room hierarchy and role expectations has been a source of friction before.
If Kirk is able to play this season, the wideout room gets crowded quickly. And then there’s the issue of how the money and fit would work within the current roster structure.
Reports did surface that Samuel was initially miffed by San Francisco signing Mike Evans, though he ultimately left the franchise on good terms. And the support for a return has been loud from inside the building, with Kittle and Juszczyk both publicly backing the idea.
Former 49ers safety Donte Whitner even floated the idea of Samuel returning in a “wide-back” role, which would let the team use him more as a hybrid running back and slot option instead of asking him to battle Evans for boundary snaps.
If Lynch passes on another veteran swing, the 49ers could simply turn the job over to their younger players. Demarcus Robinson has already handled most of the starting Z-receiver work in Pearsall’s absence, and second-round rookie De’Zhaun Stribling has reportedly been turning heads with his physicality and route progression.
However San Francisco chooses to handle it, the message is clear: the 49ers can’t afford to leave Purdy short-handed as they move toward their Week 1 opener in Melbourne.
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