Niners Nation
There’s always excitement around rookie wide receivers. That’s true for De’Zhaun Stribling this season, and it was true for Jordan Watkins last year.
There’s a running joke about young wideouts on the San Francisco 49ers falling into Kyle Shanahan’s doghouse early in their careers. Shanahan explained why we didn’t see much of Watkins as a rookie back in January:
Jordan got hurt in his first preseason game with a high ankle sprain, and he needed, he wasn’t ready yet, like 95-percent of guys who come into training camp aren’t. And then you take them through a few preseason games, you take them through an entire training camp and they’ve got a chance to get there for Week 1.
And then they usually realize, ‘oh, I’m not totally quite ready. This is what I’ve got to do and maybe I can get there by Week 5, Week 6.’ When you get hurt right away in training camp and you miss a whole training camp it’s a huge window for guys who aren’t quite ready yet. That was their chance to get ready. And then when you come back, where are you when you come back? If it’s off a high ankle sprain, how’s your conditioning now? Alright, now it takes you three weeks just to get your conditioning back to where you can start to have a chance to improve.
And when that happens, you have a setback, which he did. And so, you kind of miss that window where you had a chance to gain on people. And then where you sit in Week 12, Week 13 behind a group of guys that are more consistent at this time in their career than you are.
And then it just, it becomes unfortunate for those guys. You know, when you have a losing season, you’re totally out of stuff and you just want to give guys chances and that’s all right. But, when you’re trying to compete for one seed, trying to compete just to get in the playoffs, you don’t experiment with that at the expense of the football team.
Watkins had an ideal opportunity as a rookie to step onto the field. The circumstances are different now with Mike Evans and De’Zhaun Stribling on the roster. Can he still find a way to contribute?
Age: 24
Experience: 1 accrued season
Height: 5’11
Weight: 196 pounds
Watkins’ cap number is just over $1 million this season. Most teams will give their players on rookie contracts the benefit of the doubt so long as they’re competent. Watkins has a long way to go before he’s “on the bubble” when he’s costing the team o.34 percent of their cap.
Watkins’ base salary is a hair over $1 million this upcoming season, and his signing bonus is $166,454, which brings his cap number for 2026 to $1,171,454.
I imagine Watkins will...
