On Tuesday September 1, NFL rosters have to be cut down to 75 men. According to Mike Sando, rosters have to be at 80 men by tomorrow. The deadline for the final cut to the 53-man roster is September 5.
For the 49ers, the retirement of Marvel Smith appears to bring them down to 80 men at this point (counted up their roster and subtracted Crabtree). The question becomes who to release by Tuesday. They need to release five guys in the coming two days, although they would need to cut a sixth person if they wanted to sign a veteran offensive tackle (Jon Runyan anybody?). So, who gets the axe at this point?
A quick look at an unofficial depth chart (page 13 of this pdf) would probably yield some combination of the following:
K/P Alex Romero, WR Maurice Price, WR Mark Bradford, WR Chris Francies, FB Bill Rentmeester, one of the three young CBs (Carlos Thomas, Terrail Lambert, Jahi Word-Daniels), one of two LBs (Mark Washington, Justin Roland), one of the younger offensive linemen maybe (Jacob Bender, Joe Toledo, Matt Spanos).
The team is high on Lambert, and I'd imagine they'd prefer to avoid releasing any offensive linemen at this point. However, I just wanted to get the names out there for consideration. Given that Brandon Jones will be sitting on the roster, I bet at least 2 of the 5 cuts are from the wide receivers. At fullback, Brit Miller will make it to the last roster cuts, so the only reason to hold onto Rentmeester is if Moran Norris won't play at all next Friday, you don't want Miller playing the whole game and you don't want to use Michael Robinson at FB. So basically I'm saying, Rentmeester might not make it past Tuesday.
Anybody I'm missing or shouldn't be including? I realize the offensive linemen are probably safe right now, but I figured I"d just include them anyways.