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When the 49ers Most Likely will Move On from Deebo Samuel

It's only a matter of time before the 49ers trade or release Deebo Samuel.

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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It's only a matter of time before the 49ers trade or release Deebo Samuel.

He recently requested a trade and multiple teams are interested in his services according to ESPN's Jeremy Fowler. It's possible the 49ers could trade him sometime between now and during the draft for a fourth- or fifth-round draft pick.

But if the 49ers trade Samuel before June 1, they will lose $15.6 million in salary cap space. And if he's still on the team on March 22, they'll have to give him $15.4 million due to an option bonus in his contract. You can bet the 49ers won't give Samuel all that cash just to trade him a few weeks later.

So here are the 49ers' options. They can trade Samuel before March 22 for a late draft pick and lose more than $15 million in cap space. Or, they can cut Samuel before March 22 while designating the transaction a post-June-1 release and create more than $5 million in cap space.

That's why the 49ers are likely to release Samuel before March 22. Trading him for a mere Day 3 pick isn't worth the dead cap hit the 49ers would have to take to trade him. They need cap space more than they need another late draft pick considering they seem on the verge of making Brock Purdy one of the highest-paid players in the NFL.

Expect the 49ers to release Samuel no later than March 21.

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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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