News surrounding the San Francisco 49ers broke on Super Bowl Sunday, as several outlets reported that wide receiver Deebo Samuel requested a trade at the team’s exit meetings earlier this offseason, likely ending his stay in the Bay Area.
Samuel, a second-round pick back in the 2019 NFL Draft, had some major highs with the 49ers, earning first-team All-Pro honors back in 2021, while helping the team on their run to a Super Bowl back in 2019 and 2022.
However, the wideout posted career lows across the board in 2024, while the team drafted Ricky Pearsall in the first round of the NFL Draft last offseason to serve as Samuel’s eventual replacement.
Well, it seems that time has come, with the receiver hoping to be traded elsewhere for the final year of his contract. But, will that actually come to fruition?
The 49ers explored a trade for Samuel quite publicly last offseason, with several reports suggesting that they were involved in conversations on draft day before eventually holding on to the wideout.
Coming into the 2024 season, it felt that San Francisco was posturing for a Samuel trade this offseason. They elected not to touch his contract back during the start of the new league year last March, instead restructuring a number of other deals. Then, they drafted Pearsall before giving Brandon Aiyuk a major four-year, $120 million extension, making a large commitment to the latter.
However, the 49ers made a head-scratching move when they eventually restructured Samuel’s contract in early September, diminishing his $20.97 million salary to $1.125 million for the 2024 season by converting a large portion into a signing bonus. They also did a similar maneuver to lower Samuel’s 2025 base salary from $16.6 million to $1.17 million.
That in return lowered his cap hits for the 2024 and 2025 seasons to $12.23 and $15.96 million, respectively, as the team added a third and fourth void year to his contract to spread out the cap hits of his signing bonus.
While the move lowered Samuel’s cap hits for the two seasons, it ballooned his dead cap hit for the 2025 season to $31.55 million, which the 49ers would now incur if they were to trade or release Samuel before June 1st.
That raised questions about Samuel’s future, as a trade was previously much more feasible without the restructure. Which leads us back to the question of trading Samuel this offseason.
As mentioned, the 49ers would take on a $31.55 million dead cap hit if they traded Samuel prior to June 1st, despite his cap hit being only $15.87 million for the year currently.
Looking at a potential return for the veteran wideout, it’s hard to see the 49ers fetching anything more than a third-round pick in return for Samuel. That was the price teams were willing to part with the last offseason and the wide receiver is now one year older coming off his worst year since an injury-riddled 2020 campaign.
Is a third-round pick worth taking on an additional $16 million to your cap sheet? That seems unrealistic.
At the moment, with a breakup almost certainly happening at this point, there seems to be one logical solution: releasing Samuel with a post-June 1st designation.
That move would spread Samuel’s dead cap hit over two years, as the 49ers would incur a $10.7 million dead cap hit in 2025, saving $5.2 million in cap space, while a $20.8 million dead cap hit would come in 2026. That isn’t ideal, but it would be more feasible from a cap perspective as the salary cap continues to increase.
Cutting Samuel with a post-June 1st designation would mean the 49ers would have to carry the wide receiver on their roster past the new league year before making the move to release him, but that shouldn’t be a problem, given their amount of cap space currently.
Another possible solution is having Samuel restructure his deal with a paycut to facilitate a trade to a destination of his choice. However, that seems unlikely, as the wideout may prefer to just hit the open market and get a new multi-year deal rather than play out the final year of his contract. He would also still get the chance to communicate and sign with whatever team he chooses on the open market.
Nonetheless, at the moment, it seems more unlikely that the 49ers will actually trade Samuel with a post-June 1st release making the most sense in the situation.
