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The San Francisco 49ers face the Jacksonville Jaguars this weekend, and Tuesday brought the release of their Week 16 depth chart. I don’t see any changes of note, and so I thought it would be fun to consider who is playing for a 2018 roster spot.
The depth chart posted down below is put together by the 49ers football communications staff. Coaches can offer input, but it’s not something we can look at as the clear-cut starting lineup. For example, Elvis Dumervil is listed as the starting left defensive end, but in reality, Tank Carradine starts and Dumervil gets extensive rotation in sub-packages. This past week, Tank had 28 snaps, and Elvis had 20. But other than that, it’s mostly in line with how things shake out on the field.
From this group, listed starters that seem like decent bets to be gone, or at least out of the starting lineup could include the following:
WR Louis Murphy
LG Laken Tomlinson
RG Brandon Fusco
RT Zane Beadles (Trent Brown obvious return)
LDE Tank Carradine
ILB Brock Coyle
CB Dontae Johnson
SS Eric Reid
The safety position is particularly tough to figure out, but my guess is Reid does not return to the 49ers in 2018. I am not certain of that, but with Adrian Colbert and Jaquiski Tartt emerging the way they did, I would be surprised if Reid returned.
We saw huge roster turnover this past offseason, which was not entirely surprising given the state of the roster when John Lynch and Kyle Shanahan arrived. The 49ers have a considerable amount of cap space this year, which means we will see some additional big changes. But we are starting to see a core develop, which means less of a major overhaul in 2018. We’ll see some big changes, but it won’t be across the board changes. How they pick and choose where to make changes will be fascinating to watch given what it will tell us about internal roster assessments.
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