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ESPN Projects the 49ers Will Trade Deebo Samuel for a Day 3 Pick

Samuel's decline is so significant and his contract is so bad that the 49ers actually might have to send a team draft picks to get them to take him off their hands.
Grant Cohn|
Feb 7, 2025; New Orleans, LA, USA; San Francisco 49ers receiver Deebo Samuel on Radio Row at the Super Bowl LIX media center. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images
Feb 7, 2025; New Orleans, LA, USA; San Francisco 49ers receiver Deebo Samuel on Radio Row at the Super Bowl LIX media center. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images | Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

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San Francisco 49ers

Last offseason, the 49ers nearly traded Deebo Samuel during the draft but the deal fell through at the last minute according to him.

It's unclear which team almost traded for Samuel and what they would have given the 49ers in return, but it's safe to assume Samuel's value has dropped dramatically since last year. He's coming off one of the worst seasons of his career and he just turned 29. In retrospect, the 49ers should have traded him last year.

Now, they'll have to trade him for scraps according to ESPN.

"Finding a comp for Samuel is difficult in large part because Samuel isn't a traditional receiver," writes ESPN's Nick Wagoner. When the Buffalo Bills traded Stefon Diggs to the Houston Texans last April, the Bills received a 2025 second-round pick but attached a 2024 sixth-round selection and a 2025 fifth-round choice to Diggs to make it happen. At the time, Diggs was coming off a 107-catch, 1,183-yard, eight-touchdown season.

"Because Samuel is coming off a down year and is entering the final year of his contract with other top receivers set to be available in free agency or trade, a Day 3 draft pick and perhaps another late-round pick would probably satisfy the 49ers.

If there isn't much of a trade market, the Niners might have to settle for less unless they package picks with Samuel."

That means Samuel's decline is so significant and his contract is so bad that the 49ers actually might have to send a team draft picks to get them to take him off their hands. Wagoner lists the Commanders, the Steelers and the Texans as three teams in particular that could be interested in Samuel's services, such as they are.

Stay tuned.

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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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