There’s been no bigger Los Angeles Rams killer over the last few seasons than Deebo Samuel.
During a Monday Night Football game in 2021, for example, he caught all five passing targets for 95 yards, including a 40-yard catch-and-run touchdown. What’s more, in a season in which the 49ers ran low on tailbacks, he carried the ball five times against the Rams, averaged 7.2 yards a rush and scored from nine yards out. He’d taken some carries previously, but that game was the first in which he was truly featured as a so-called “wideback.”
“I don’t know if they were surprised or not,” Samuel recalled Tuesday. “I think I was kind of more surprised than they were at the time.”
Using Samuel in the backfield altered the 49ers’ trajectory that season. From that point on, he was part of the running back rotation and helped propel San Francisco, 3-5 entering the Rams game, to the NFC Championship where they lost to the Rams. Samuel was effective in that contest, too, finishing with 98 combined yards and a touchdown.
This year, however, the runs are no longer a surprise. They’re not nearly as effective, either.
Against the Chicago Bears on Sunday, for example, Samuel had five carries and averaged just 2.6 yards per run. He took to Twitter a day later.
“Not struggling at all just not getting the ball!!!!!!!” Samuel wrote in a post that has since been taken down.
That take isn’t true. Samuel has touched the ball 72 times on offense, the second-most on the team. Through the same point last season, he had 75 touches.
Asked Tuesday if he wanted to elaborate on his message, Samuel said, “I mean, you read what you read. (I’m) a little frustrated for sure.”
Samuel isn’t always expansive in his weekly media sessions, but he did note that while the Rams might have been surprised to see him in the backfield so often on Nov. 15, 2021, he’s no longer catching teams off guard. That is especially true with so many of the 49ers’ true tailbacks missing from the lineup. Rookie Isaac Guerendo missed Tuesday’s practice with a sprained foot, raising the possibility that Patrick Taylor Jr. could make his first-ever start Thursday. Samuel will likely be part of that rotation as well.
“We’ve been doing it for more than three years now,” Samuel said. “So you’ve got a 50-50 chance that I’m in the backfield, getting a handoff or an end around or anything along those lines. So they kind of have a (sense) of what’s going on.”
Though Samuel’s statistics lag this season, teammate George Kittle predicted the receiver was about to “pop off.”
Kittle noted that Samuel’s modest stat line against Chicago wasn’t due to a lack of effort but because of scheme. He noted that the Bears defensive ends had been playing a certain way all season and the 49ers entered the game thinking they could exploit that tendency with plays to Samuel. Those defensive ends, however, suddenly started playing differently Sunday, perhaps because the Bears parted ways with head coach Matt Eberflus, who had called the defensive plays, in the run-up to the 49ers game.
“Unfortunately for a couple of those, they had better calls than the play we called – some type of pressure or how they switched their defense up,” Kittle said. “Or we didn’t execute those blocks for him in the ways that we should have. I think Deebo’s very close to breaking them wide open. So I’m very excited for him this Thursday. Because I think he’s gonna have one of those amazing Deebo Thursday night games against the Rams. That’s what I see.”
Odds and ends
• In addition to Guerendo, defensive end Nick Bosa (hip/oblique), tackle Trent Williams (heel/ankle) and guard Ben Bartch (ankle) missed practice. Bartch likely will go on injured reserve on Thursday.
Linebackers Dee Winters (ankle), Demetrius Flannigan-Fowles (knee) and Dre Greenlaw were limited as were safety Malik Mustapha (chest, shoulder) and defensive end Yetur Gross-Matos (knee).
Kyle Shanahan continues to stop short of saying whether Greenlaw will make his 2024 debut against the Rams. The linebacker hasn’t had a setback, Shanahan said, but he wants to talk to him and assess how he feels before officially activating him.
• The 49ers restructured defensive tackle Javon Hargrave’s contract, reducing his 2025 salary-cap hit from $28 million to $10.3 million. Hargrave suffered a torn triceps against the Rams in Week 3 that ended his season.
Asked what the restructure means for Hargrave’s future, Shanahan said, “The plan for him is to be a Niner.”
He said he lets the front office handle salary-cap issues during the season.
“The mechanics of contract stuff, those are things I don’t look into until the offseason,” he said.
• Asked if kicker Jake Moody was experimenting with short kickoffs when he twice missed the so-called landing zone Sunday, Shanahan said no, Moody just “shanked” the kicks. Both resulted in the Bears getting the ball at their own 40-yard line.
• Shanahan tapped a pair of younger players, Brock Purdy and Deommodore Lenoir, to speak at the team meeting Saturday. After seeing how well the team responded the next day, is Shanahan tempted to ask that duo to talk again?
“I’m not superstitious, but I’m a little stitious,” he said. “… They might have to do it again.”