As the trade deadline creeps closer, some think a high-profile team is lurking as to the biggest name that remains potentially available.
Chris Simms mentioned on Thursday’s PFT Live that some in league circles are wondering whether the 49ers could make a play for Colts running back Jonathan Taylor. (People around the league ask Simms those questions, because 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan is one of his best friends — and because they assume Simms knows what’s happening with the 49ers, even if he rarely if ever does.)
A Taylor-to-49ers trade would be jarring. It would be unexpected. As jarring and unexpected as the news that emerged on a Thursday night in October 2022, when word first broke of the 49ers’ trade with the Panthers for running back Christian McCaffrey.
A trade for Taylor would create obvious questions regarding McCaffrey. Taylor has $3.87 million remaining in base salary (after Week 9, it drops to $3.49 million). McCaffrey has a 2026 cap number of $10.861 million. While that’s low enough to keep the duo together for the rest of the season, things would change in 2027.
McCaffrey has a cap number of $26.4 million, with no guaranteed money in what will be the last year of his current deal. Taylor would count for more than $16 million in 2027, under his current contract.
Most likely, the 49ers would move on from McCaffrey after this season, if they trade for Taylor.
And, yes, it would be a stunner if the 49ers trade for Taylor. The exact same kind of stunner that it was when the 49ers traded for McCaffrey in 2022.
But that’s what teams do when they’re serious about going all in. The Bears are. The Seahawks are. The 49ers may be.
Every contender needs to ask itself that question as the trade deadline approaches. Are you content to wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which one fills up first? Or are you going to turn a wishlist into tangible action items aimed at potentially putting a Super Bowl ring on everyone’s finger?
49ers Clips
It is set to be another week without wide receiver Mike Evans for the 49ers.
Evans did not play in Week 7 due to Achilles tendinitis and he remained out for the team’s first post-bye practice on Wednesday. General Manager John Lynch stopped short of ruling him out for Week 9’s game against the Raiders during a Thursday appearance on KNBR, but said that it is “probably unlikely” that the wideout is back in action on Sunday.
Lynch referenced Christian McCaffrey’s past issues with a similar injury and said the 49ers “don’t want it to become something that really lingers” for Evans because the goal is for him to be as impactful as he was in the early part of the season.
Deebo Samuel has been out since Week 5 with a hamstring injury and he was also out of Wednesday’s practice.
The 49ers could get a couple of wideouts back this week, however. Demarcus Robinson has been designated for return from injured reserve and KhaDarel Hodge, who played in the first three games of the season, returned to the practice squad after being released in early October.
Yes, the 49ers tried to arrange a reunion with receiver Jauan Jennings.
Over the weekend, Jay Glazer of Fox Sports reported that the 49ers and Vikings had a deal in place, but that Jennings eventually decided to stay in Minnesota. On Wednesday, 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan confirmed it.
“The report was accurate, just not totally exactly detailed up,” Shanahan told reporters. “I mean, you can’t talk to other players on other teams. You’re not allowed to. We love Jauan. We have such a good relationship with Jauan and know him really well and we didn’t want to do it without talking to him first. So, we had to agree on some things to at least make it close enough to be able to talk to him.
“Then when we got on a FaceTime with J.J., it went well. It was awesome. We talked about a lot of stuff, and he ended up saying that he was happy with where he was. It wasn’t just like a definite ‘no’ first, but he was like, ‘Man, Kyle, I’m pretty happy here and liking stuff.’ And when I heard the way he talked and where we’re at, I agreed with him. So, it was a good conversation and something that was possible, but that’s why it didn’t go down.”
Jennings still hasn’t done much for the Vikings. In six games, he has six catches for 54 yards.
The fact that the Vikings allowed Jennings to talk to the 49ers shows that the Vikings were willing to move on. The fact that Jennings stayed has kept receiver Odell Beckham Jr. parked on the Minnesota practice squad.
49ers running back Christian McCaffrey missed part of the Week 7 loss to the Falcons with what had been called a thigh injury during the game. By Monday, it had been revised to a hamstring injury.
Nine days later, McCaffrey wasn’t able to practice because of it.
In the first official injury report issued by the 49ers since they said he had a thigh injury during the Week 7 loss, the 49ers say that McCaffrey missed practice due to a hamstring injury.
After the game in Atlanta, McCaffrey said it felt like his leg “just died on me.” On Wednesday, McCaffrey expressed optimism that he’ll play on Sunday against the Raiders.
“I had no idea [it was a hamstring injury],” McCaffrey said Wednesday, via Vic Tafur of The Athletic. “Sometimes the adrenaline and all these other things can get to you. . . . It wasn’t too bad. Having the bye week was awesome. But now I feel great.”
Still, not great enough to practice. Which creates the kind of mixed signals that conjure memories of the strange way in which the team handled McCaffrey’s 2024 Achilles injury, which resulted in his unexpected scratch for the regular-season opener.
Here’s the basic reality. He had a career-high 413 touches in 2025. He has 118 in seven games this year. Now 30, the workload can take a toll — especially in a 17-game season.
49ers defensive end Nick Bosa returned to practice Wednesday after missing the team’s past five games with a calf injury. Bosa was a limited participant.
“It’s a long year, and I kind of just reminded myself that I need to be ready for the long haul,” Bosa said, via Harrison Rich of the San Francisco Chronicle.
Bosa tore his right ACL in a Sept. 21, 2025, game against the Cardinals and underwent surgery five days later. As he was coming back this summer, Bosa experienced soreness and tendinitis in his right knee, and the 49ers backed him down until Sept. 2 when he returned to practice.
He injured his left calf while warming up in practice for Week 3.
“I must have had some type of compensation going on, especially in that first week back,” Bosa said. “I was kind of trying to push it back with the [right knee] tendinitis, so I may have been favoring [the left calf] a little bit. I was just doing my normal warm-up drills one day, and I tweaked it. Calves are a pretty long process. I’ve never had one, so it took a little longer than I expected, but I don’t even think about it anymore.”
Wide receiver Mike Evans (ribs/Achilles) remained out of practice, and running back Christian McCaffrey (hamstring) also didn’t practice.
Wide receiver Deebo Samuel (hamstring), safety Siran Neal (knee/foot) and offensive tackle Trent Williams (rest) were the other players who sat out Wednesday’s session.
Linebacker Luke Gifford (groin), cornerback Nate Hobbs (adductor), wide receiver Christian Kirk (knee), wide receiver Demarcus Robinson (ankle), safety Marques Sigle (ankle), cornerback Upton Stout (shoulder) and linebacker Garret Wallow (hamstring) were limited.
When 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan was asked in September if the team’s injury issues at wide receiver had led him to consider bringing Brandon Aiyuk back, his answer was a strong no.
Aiyuk has started the process of being reinstated from the team’s reserve/left squad list and part of that process would involve him reporting to the team’s facility later this week if he has not been released ahead of time. Shanahan was asked at a Wednesday press conference about any expectations he has about such a visit.
“None. I have no expectation,” Shanahan said. “I’ve kind of moved on with that mentally and doing kind of how I talked to you guys two months ago. Nothing’s really changed for me.”
Shanahan said he has not had any conversations about a roster exemption that would give the 49ers more time to explore a trade, which joins releasing him or welcoming him back to the active roster as the team’s options once he is off the left squad list. Shanahan said there are “no absolutes” when asked if he could envision any scenario where Aiyuk plays for the team again, but his other answers sent a strong message that Aiyuk will be moving on once the administrative work is done.
With 49ers receiver Brandon Aiyuk finally doing what he should have done months ago, the ball will return to the team’s court.
The process for being reinstated from the reserve/left squad list is believed to be administrative. (Then again, the process of applying for the supplemental draft was believed to be administrative, too; Brendan Sorsby learned otherwise.) Once the league reinstates Aiyuk, the 49ers will have to put him on the roster, trade him, or cut him.
The 49ers could emerge from the situation with a roster exemption, which would buy them some time — and which would force Aiyuk to follow through on the obligation to show up, take a physical, and see what happens next.
The 49ers would then have options. Aiyuk would have to take a physical. If he fails, the 49ers could deem it to be a non-football injury. That would allow them to park him on the reserve/NFI list and not pay him.
They could try to trade him before Tuesday’s deadline, but no trade would happen without Aiyuk restructuring his contract to the league minimum, or something close to it. A trade seems highly unlikely, given that his 2026 base salary is $26.150 million.
The simplest outcome would be for the 49ers to cut him, and to let him sign wherever he wants. (If they cut him after the trade deadline, he’d have to pass through waivers. No one would claim his contract as it’s currently written.)
The biggest question is whether the 49ers will simply wash their hands of Aiyuk or play hardball with him. Hard feelings linger, given the way the relationship disintegrated.
It all comes down to whether the 49ers want to spend the time and effort necessary to make it as difficult as they can for him to get what he clearly wants: The ability to sign with any team he chooses.
He has said he wants to play for the Commanders. It’s still unknown whether the Commanders would want him. It’s also unknown whether anyone else would want him.
None of that matters until the 49ers release him. It’s possible, in theory, that they try to find a way to keep him on ice without paying him.
Appearing Tuesday on 105.3 The Fan in Dallas, Cowboys owner and G.M. Jerry Jones made a clunky case for the absence of a correlation between coaching pay and wins.
When he makes his second weekly visit of the team’s flagship station, he should be asked this question: Would you want Andy Reid, Sean Payton, John Harbaugh, Sean McVay, or Kyle Shanahan to be the Cowboys’ head coach?
They’re the five highest-paid coaches in the league. And any team that doesn’t have an objectively great coach would absolutely want one of those five.
Because they win. In 2026, their combined record is 25-11-1. They have six Super Bowl trophies, and 11 Super Bowl appearances.
They’re highly compensated because they win. Which makes them worthy of high compensation.
It’s obvious. And it’s insulting to the intelligence of anyone with reasonable cognitive skills (which barely qualifies me to be insulted) for Jerry to insist that there’s “zero correlation” between coaching pay and wins.
So what’s really going on here? At one level, he’s being cheap when it comes to a budgetary line item that has no salary cap, or salary floor. At another level, he likely doesn’t want to have a true alpha whose W-2 would allow him to take over the team, and to minimize the outsized influence of anyone named Jones.
Whatever the case, Jones’s strategy to treat a coaching search like an exercise in wildcatting ignores the fact that he can afford to pay for a high-functioning oil well. But he doesn’t want to spend the money — and he doesn’t want to give the coach the power that comes from being highly paid.
Through it all, the Cowboys haven’t been to the NFC Championship since 1995. And there’s definitely a correlation between Jerry’s approach to hiring coaches and the continuation of “this ‘drought’ that people say we’re in.”
Wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk has taken a significant step toward getting back on the field.
Aiyuk’s agent Drew Rosenhaus told Adam Schefter of ESPN that his client has filed for reinstatement from the 49ers’ reserve/left squad list. Rosenhaus also said that Aiyuk plans on reporting to the 49ers’ facility this week.
“Brandon is healthy and ready to get back on the field,” Rosenhaus said.
Aiyuk landed on the list due to a protracted standoff with the 49ers about how he chose to rehab his 2024 knee injury and that included the 49ers’ decision to void the remaining guarantees in his contract. The 49ers said that Aiyuk will never play for the team again, which would leave them with the choices of trading or releasing him once Aiyuk’s reinstatement is processed and he reports to the team. Previous attempts to trade him drew no success, so a release may be the likeliest outcome.
When the Raiders drafted Ashton Jeanty with the sixth overall pick in 2025, the expectation was that he’d be their top choice in the backfield for years to come.
Jeanty has taken the most snaps of any of the team’s running backs so far this season, but he averaged just over three yards a carry in the first seven games so the Raiders changed things up in Week 8. Mike Washington got more snaps than Jeanty and carried the ball 25 times while Jeanty ran it twice. Jeanty saw most of his playing time on passing downs and came up with a key 45-yard catch and run, but the shift in playing time remained a topic of conversation at head coach Klint Kubiak’s Monday press conference.
Kubiak said it wasn’t a permanent arrangement because decisions on playing time will be based on who the team feels is the top option at a given moment.
“I think it’s always a moving target,” Kubiak said. “You see where your team is at and who’s playing the best ball at the time. It’s a 17-game regular season where things change every week. They’ve been changing at guard, they change up front defensively, they change at corner. That’s the NFL. We have a young roster and we’re going to give guys opportunities and see what fits us best. But your 11, whether you’re playing really well or not playing well at all, it’s always going to change a little bit.”
Kubiak pointed to Washington’s practice work rather than Jeanty’s sluggish production as the reason why he got bumped up in Sunday’s rotation. Washington produced 83 yards on 25 carries, so it wasn’t a major change in terms of success on the ground for the Raiders. It was a win after four straight losses, though, and that’s usually a good argument for sticking with an approach the next time out.
