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How 49ers WR Deebo Samuel has Regressed

Samuel never has been a good route runner. He always has relied on Kyle Shanahan to scheme him open by running him into wide open voids in the opponent's zone coverage.

Grant Cohn

Feb 11, 2024; Paradise, Nevada, USA; San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Deebo Samuel (19) against the
Feb 11, 2024; Paradise, Nevada, USA; San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Deebo Samuel (19) against the / Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports

Deebo Samuel is still a good player, but he's not nearly what he was just a couple years ago.

In 2021, he was their No. 1 receiver AND their No. 1 running back. Now he's neither, partially because his performance has fallen off, and partially because they don't need him to play running back anymore. They have Christian McCaffrey, who's better than Samuel at running back.

Now Samuel has to be a wide receiver, not a hybrid player. And when the 49ers throw him a screen pass, he's still extremely dangerous after the catch. But he can't beat man to man coverage anymore.

Samuel never has been a good route runner. He always has relied on Kyle Shanahan to scheme him open by running him into wide open voids in the opponent's zone coverage. Samuel doesn't have the body control or finesse to work the stems of his routes and free himself against tight man-to-man coverage.

So in the past, when teams would play man coverage against Samuel, he could still win by running deep. He had the speed to win vertically, as coaches say. So teams had to be careful playing bump-and-run coverage against him.

Now Samuel doesn't have the speed to win vertically anymore. He's 28 and he has slowed down. And so now, opposing defensive backs line up in his face with no fear of getting beat deep. Which means any team can shut down Samuel simply by covering him man to man.

The 49ers can't trade him soon enough.

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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