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Travis Benjamin Opts Out of 2020 Season

The first 49ers player has opted out.
Grant Cohn|
Travis Benjamin Opts Out of 2020 Season
Travis Benjamin Opts Out of 2020 Season

The first 49ers player has opted out of the 2020 season.

Wide receiver Travis Benjamin posted on social media that he will sit out the upcoming season because of concerns about the coronavirus. He will collect $150,000 this year, and remain under contract with the 49ers in 2021.

Benjamin was on the roster bubble, and his contract had zero dollars guaranteed. So if he got cut, the 49ers would have paid him no money. By opting out, Benjamin secured at least some money while protecting himself and his family from COVID-19.

The deadline to opt out is Thursday at 1:00 p.m. Pacific Time.

Benjamin’s one-year absence will improve the chances that Dante Pettis and Richie James Jr. will make the 53-man roster in 2020. But if the 49ers use more 22 personnel next season, which is two tight ends, two running backs and only one wide receiver, they might keep only six wide receivers instead of the seven they kept last year. And so Pettis and James might still get cut. They need to play well in training camp to make the team.

More roster moves:

The 49ers activated running back Jeff Wilson Jr. from the Reserve/COVID-19 List just six days after he reportedly tested positive. Perhaps the test was a false positive? That, or he healed quickly. Either way, good for him. I still predict he will make the final roster over expensive veteran Tevin Coleman. Wilson Jr. is young and cheap and a good receiver for a running back.

The 49ers moved Richie James Jr. from the Reserve/COVID-19 List to the Active/Non-Football Injury List. Meaning he has recovered from the coronavirus, which he’s had since mid June, and now he simply is recovering from a broken wrist. No word yet on when the 49ers will activate him to practice.

The 49ers waived/Non-Football Injury backup nickelback D.J. Reed, who has a torn pectoral muscle. If he clears waivers, the 49ers will place him on the Injured Reserve List, which will end his season, and Jamar Taylor most likely will replace him as the backup nickelback.

UPDATE: Reed did not clear waivers. The Seahawks claimed him off waivers, according to the NFL Network's Ian Rapoport. They needed a nickel back, because starter Quinton Dunbar is on the Commissioner's exempt list.

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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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