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49ers to Activate Deebo Samuel from NFI List

Next Sunday against the Arizona Cardinals will be as close to must win for the 49ers as a Week 1 game can be. And their odds of winning may have just increased.

Grant Cohn

Next Sunday against the Arizona Cardinals will be as close to must win for the 49ers as a Week 1 game can be.

And their odds of winning may have just increased.

The 49ers will activate wide receiver Deebo Samuel from the Non-Football Injury List, according to NBC Bay Area’s Matt Maiocco. 

Meaning Samuel will be eligible to play Week 1 against the Cardinals. That doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll be ready or in football shape -- he missed all of training camp. But he just might play anyway. The 49ers can’t afford to lose their home opener to a division rival.

Samuel, 24, suffered a Jones fracture in his foot while working out by himself during the pandemic this offseason. Had he started the season on the NFI List, he would have had to miss the first six games of the season before he could even begin practicing with the team. So it makes sense the 49ers would activate him now.

While Samuel hasn’t practiced this offseason, he has ran and worked out on a side field, and he looks healthy. The 49ers may have been merely cautious with him during training camp.

The 49ers drafted Samuel in the second round of the 2019 draft. He finished his rookie season with 57 catches for 802 receiving yards and three touchdown catches, plus he ran 14 times for 159 rushing yards and three rushing TDs.

And then in the playoffs, he had 16 touches for 229 yards in three games. He was one of the 49ers most valuable players. He should have an even better season in 2020 if he can stay healthy.

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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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