49ers roster cuts: Who will not make it through the first round?

The San Francisco 49ers head into this weekend for their third preseason game with roster cuts on the brain. The first round of roster cuts is fast approaching. Next Tuesday, September 1, the 49ers have until 1 p.m. PT to cut down their roster to no more than 75 players. They will follow that up on Saturday, September 5 when they have to cut down to the 53-man player. That Saturday is also when they must be in line with the salary cap for their entire roster of players.

The approaching deadline makes this weekend's contest against the Denver Broncos a huge deal for several players. I am sure Trent Baalke and company already have a good idea of the roster cuts. However, a strong performance in Week 3 could buy players one more game.

The 49ers currently have 89 players on the roster following the Derek Carrier trade. I have posted the full roster down below, and I thought we would start taking a look at potential roster moves to get to the 75 man limit.

First and foremost, the 49ers can clear two spots with their injury lists. The team can move players from Active/PUP and Active/NFI to the Reserve versions of those lists, and cut down from the 89-man limit. If they remain on the Active version of the list, they count against that roster limit, so I expect those to happen. That means, we can expect DeAndre Smelter to be moved over to Reserve/NFI, and Daniel Kilgore to be moved over to Reserve/PUP. I suppose the team could hold out hope Kilgore will be able to get back sooner, but I suspect he ends up on the PUP list to start the regular season.

That leaves the 49ers with 12 roster moves to make. Right now, some candidates to be cut would potentially include the following:

RB Kendall Gaskins
WR Mario Hull
WR Nigel King
WR Issac Blakeney
WR DiAndre Campbell
TE Xavier Grimble
OL Patrick Miller

DT Garrison Smith
ILB Steve Beauharnais
ILB Desmond Bishop (with injury settlement)
OLB Shawn Lemon
OLB Ahmad Brooks (maybe?)
CB Mylan Hicks
S Jermaine Whitehead

K Corey Acosta

Some of the candidates seem fairly obvious, while others are not quite as clear. I went through early preseason stats, snap counts and the depth chart to try and figure out some additional candidates. Snap count is hard to use for predictive purposes. After all, some of these low snap count guys might be hidden by the team for the practice squad. If that's the case, they would likely not be cut with this first round of roster cuts.

Ahmad Brooks is on there just as a maybe option. I am starting to think we might see the team wait a while before any decision is made. The NFL can put him on the Commissioner's Exempt list, but there is no word on the next step in that regard. Given his questionable status, Shawn Lemon is another guy who might stick around for the last game, simply because the team might need bodies.

Desmond Bishop had surgery on his hand, and his status is up in the air. I did not think he would make the final roster anyway, but if the team is planning on releasing him, I could see them release him and pay him an injury settlement. That is based on expected number of missed regular season weeks, multiplied by his weekly pay. It would count against the 49ers salary cap this year.