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49ers Place Tavon Austin on I.R. with Knee Injury

Another 49ers wide receiver is out for the season.
Grant Cohn|
49ers Place Tavon Austin on I.R. with Knee Injury
49ers Place Tavon Austin on I.R. with Knee Injury

SANTA CLARA -- Another 49ers wide receiver is out for the season.

This time it’s Tavon Austin. The 49ers announced they placed him on Injured Reserve Thursday afternoon. Austin is the third receiver the 49ers have placed on I.R. with a knee injury since training camp started. The other two are Jalen Hurd and J.J. Nelson.

The 49ers signed Austin and Nelson -- two speed receivers -- after deep threat Travis Benjamin opted out of the season. And the 49ers signed Benjamin because they traded speedster Marquise Goodwin, who also ended up opting out of the 2020 season.

It seems the 49ers feverishly are searching for a speed receiver with two healthy knees. They have veteran Kevin White, who’s healthy and ran a 4.35 40-yard dash at the 2015 NFL Scouting Combine. But he has just 25 catches and zero touchdowns in his entire career. If the 49ers cut him, his career might end.

Fortunately for the 49ers, they activated wide receiver Richie James Jr. off the Non-Football Injury List on Thursday.

James Jr. ran a 4.48 40 at the 2018 Combine, and averages 19.7 yards per catch for his career, although he has caught just 15 passes in two seasons. James also returns punts and kickoffs for the 49ers -- he’s a key member of their team, and he’s better than Tavon Austin.

If the 49ers want someone better than James, they’ll probably have to make a trade. Austin was the best free-agent receiver available just a few weeks ago.

Published
Grant Cohn
GRANT COHN

Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn's channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers' official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.

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