49ers Notes: Mullens, Foster, Shanahan
Despite an iffy performance on Sunday, the 49ers will move forward with Nick Mullens as their starting quarterback, head coach Kyle Shanahan says (Twitter link via Matt Barrows of The Athletic). Given the 49ers’ lack of other viable options, it’s not a huge surprise.
C.J. Beathard is the only other QB on the roster and he didn’t exactly inspire confidence in his five starts this year. Granted, neither player has set the world on fire. Beathard completed just 60.4% of his passes with eight touchdowns against seven interceptions while Mullens has completed 65.6% of his throws with five TDs and four picks. However, Mullens did have a strong outing in his first start against the Raiders a few weeks back.
Ultimately, both men are playing for an opportunity to stick with the Niners as Jimmy Garoppolo‘s backup in 2019. Mullens is signed through next year and Beathard is under contract through 2020, but Beathard can be cut with minimal fiscal penalty and there are zero guarantees remaining on Mullens’ pact.
Here’s more from San Francisco:
- The latest allegations against Reuben Foster put a harsh spotlight on 49ers GM John Lynch, Charles Robinson of Yahoo Sports opines. The 49ers gave Foster a second chance after he was accused of domestic violence back in February. Then, on Saturday night, Foster allegedly struck girlfriend Elissa Ennis again, prompting the Niners to cut him. Robinson questions the team’s wisdom in drafting Foster in the first place given his red flags, giving him a second opportunity after the first DV arrest, and allowing Foster to be with his girlfriend in the team’s hotel.
- Shanahan says he decided to release Foster immediately after hearing of the allegations over the weekend. “We’ll see what happens in the court of law,” Shanahan said (via Barrows). “I wasn’t there. But too many things have happened and we’ve tried to help him out a lot. I know he’s been trying, too, but this was a mess-up (so significant) that it doesn’t matter whether he did it or not. It’s time to move on.”
NFL Practice Squad Updates: 11/26/18
Today’s practice squad updates:
Arizona Cardinals
- Signed: WR Montay Crockett
Chicago Bears
- Signed: DB John Franklin III
Detroit Lions
- Released: DB Horace Richardson
Green Bay Packers
- Signed: WR Teo Redding
Indianapolis Colts
- Signed: TE Je’Ron Hamm, QB Phillip Walker
- Released: DE Anthony Winbush
New York Giants
- Released: K Marshall Koehn
Oakland Raiders
- Released: CB Arrion Springs
San Francisco 49ers
- Signed: LB James Onwualu
Washington Redskins
- Released: T Jarron Jones
49ers DB Jimmie Ward Done For Season
49ers defensive back Jimmie Ward will miss the remainder of the season after breaking his forearm on Sunday, head coach Kyle Shanahan told reporters (Twitter link via Ian Rapoport of NFL.com).
Ward hasn’t been able to avoid injury over the past year-plus, as he also missed the second half of the 2017 campaign with a broken arm. A former first-round pick, Ward had played both safety and cornerback this season, displaying versatility when injuries elsewhere on the San Francisco roster forced him to move between positions. He’d started the past four games at corner in place of Adrian Colbert, who was placed on injured reserve in late October.
“I wanted to finish the season off,” Ward said, per Nick Wagoner of ESPN.com. “Safety is easy for me. It’s natural. Corner, I just started playing corner when I got in the league so each play, each game, I just started getting better, just like I was getting better at safety. So, I’ll be all right. I’ll bounce back and I’ll ball.”
Ward is currently playing on his fifth-year option, on which he’s collecting $8.526MM before hitting free agency next spring. The 49ers could conceivably re-sign Ward before he reaches the open market, but given that he was at least mentioned in trade rumors in November, it’s possible San Francisco is ready to move on.
Ward, 27, will end the 2018 season having appeared in nine games while making seven starts. He played 62.9% of the 49ers’ defensive snaps and roughly a third of the club’s special teams snaps, managing 24 tackles in that time.
Bengals Place Andy Dalton On IR
Andy Dalton‘s thumb injury will end his season. The Bengals will place their starting quarterback on IR, Paul Dehner Jr. of the Cincinnati Enquirer reports (on Twitter).
Cincinnati also claimed Tom Savage off waivers from the 49ers, per Dehner (on Twitter). Jeff Driskel, who took his first NFL snaps this season, will be in line to start the rest of the way for Cincinnati. This may deal a massive blow to the Bengals’ fleeting playoff hopes.
Torn thumb ligaments will cause Dalton to venture to IR, Ian Rapoport of NFL.com reports (on Twitter). It’s not known if a surgery is scheduled, but that would be logical given the IR announcement. This malady forced Dalton out of the Bengals’ Week 12 loss, but it was initially reported the eighth-year quarterback did not suffer a break. Still, he will head to IR for the first time in his career.
Dalton has missed just three games in his career — all in 2015, which crushed probably the best Bengals team in the past 30 years — and the Bengals did not invest much in a backup quarterback this offseason. A.J. McCarron departed via free agency, but the Bengals retained Driskel and essentially promoted him to QB2.
The Bengals started out 4-1 but have lost five of their past six games. Dalton did not finish losses against the Saints and Browns, the former because of the nature of the game. He was enjoying a better season than he produced in 2017, throwing 21 touchdown passes and holding a 64.6 Total QBR — nearly 20 points better than his 2017 mark.
Dalton had cooled off, though, since Cincy’s hot start, failing to eclipse 160 passing yards in three of his past five starts — the most recent such instance because of his injury. A.J. Green‘s absence had plenty to do with this, but while the Bengals’ top player may be ready to return in Week 13 against the Broncos, Driskel (36 career pass attempts) will be throwing him passes.
Driskel began his college career at Florida before transferring to Louisiana Tech. He landed with the 49ers in 2016 as a UDFA.
Savage spent parts of this season with the 49ers but was jettisoned multiple times, the most recent cut coming Saturday. He was the Texans’ opening day starter in 2017, but Deshaun Watson quickly replaced him. After Watson’s injury, Savage returned. He finished last season with 1,412 passing yards, five touchdown throws and six INTs.
49ers Notes: Foster, Mack, Goodwin
We know that soon-to-be-former 49ers linebacker Reuben Foster was arrested on a domestic violence charge last night following an incident at the team’s hotel in Tampa Bay, and that the team is going to put Foster on the waiver wire tomorrow. GM John Lynch has since given an interview on the situation, and he indicated that the decision to cut Foster was made because Foster failed to uphold the standards set for him after the issues he had earlier this year (Twitter link via Nick Wagoner of ESPN.com). Lynch added that he and team ownership agreed on the move.
Now for more from San Francisco, starting with more Foster fallout:
- Matt Barrows of The Athletic provides a series of tweets with more detail on the Foster incident and Lynch’s reaction to it.
- Former NFL agent Joel Corry notes that the 49ers will carry roughly $2.35MM in dead money for Foster on the 2019 cap (Twitter link). Foster’s two-game suspension that he served at the beginning of this season wiped out his base salary guarantees, so the dead money figure stems entirely from signing bonus proration.
- In two separate pieces, Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk examines Foster’s chances of being picked up by another club. Florio notes that any team interested in Foster’s services would first want to know if the league plans to place Foster on the Commissioner Exempt list, which is a device for keeping players off the field when those players face certain types of criminal charges, including allegations of domestic violence. A player cannot be placed on the list unless he is on a team, but he would be eligible to be paid during his stay on the list. Any team is free to call the league office to determine what its intentions are with respect to Foster, but unless the league is able to definitively say that Foster is not a candidate for the list — which seems unlikely — it does not appear that Foster will be claimed on waivers. It also seems that no one will be interested in signing Foster even when he clears waivers until his status with the league is determined.
- We knew that the 49ers were interested in trading for Khalil Mack before he was dealt to the Bears, but we also heard that San Francisco had simply been outbid by Chicago. However, Lynch indicated during a radio interview with 95.7 The Game on Friday that he continues to believe that the 49ers had a better offer on the table for Mack (audio link). To get Mack, the Bears gave up two first-round picks, a 2019 sixth-rounder, and a 2020 third-rounder (though some draft capital came back to Chicago as well), so Lynch is apparently suggesting that he was prepared to give more than that to land the elite defender.
- Wide receiver Marquise Goodwin traveled with the team to Tampa Bay, but he is not present for San Francisco’s matchup with the Bucs, as Adam Schefter of ESPN.com tweets. Goodwin was reportedly excused from the team to address a personal matter, and he was also excused from practice earlier this week due to a personal matter, though it is presently unclear whether it is the same issue.
- Ahkello Witherspoon, who was selected two rounds after Foster in the 2017 draft, is at something of a crossroads with the 49ers, as Eric Branch of the San Francisco Chronicle writes. Witherspoon has been benched twice this year and has regressed in coverage and tackling after a strong rookie campaign, and while it seems unlikely the 49ers would cut him at the end of the season, his play over the course of the team’s final six games will have a big impact on how aggressively the 49ers pursue cornerback upgrades in the offseason.
Reuben Foster Arrested For Domestic Violence, Cut By 49ers
49ers linebacker Reuben Foster was arrested at the team hotel in Tampa Bay at 9:10pm last night on one count of first-degree misdemeanor domestic-violence battery, as Eric Branch of the San Francisco Chronicle (among others) reports. The 49ers announced that they will waive the 2017 first-rounder.
Foster was held without bail overnight, but has since been released on $2K bail, as Greg Auman of The Athletic tweets. The judge also ordered that Foster have no contact with the alleged victim, who has been identified as Elissa Ennis. As those who have followed Foster’s brief but troubled NFL career will recall, Ennis is the same woman who accused Foster of striking her last February, which led to Foster’s arrest. The domestic violence charges stemming from that arrest were then dropped after Ennis recanted her allegations and admitted that the injuries she sustained were actually suffered during a fight with another woman or two women.
In a statement, Tampa Police said Foster and Ennis — whom the statement identified as a “female victim” — have been involved “in an on-again-off-again relationship over the past three years.” The statement said the two were engaged in a verbal altercation and that “Foster slapped [Ennis’] phone out of her hand, pushed her in the chest area, and slapped her with an open hand on the left side of her face. Officers observed a one-inch scratch on the victim’s left collarbone.”
Foster’s February arrest — which also included a weapons charge that led to 232 hours of community service and two years of probation — came just a few weeks after he was arrested for possession of marijuana. Though the marijuana charge and the domestic violence charges were dropped, Foster was still suspended for the first two games of the 2018 regular season for violating the league’s conduct and substance abuse policies. Of course, his draft stock fell following injuries and several incidents at the 2017 scouting combine, but the 49ers made him the 31st-overall pick of the 2017 draft anyway. It initially appeared that they would be rewarded for their gamble, as Foster performed quite well in his 10-game rookie campaign, which was shortened due to an injury he sustained in the 2017 opener.
This year, in addition to his two-game suspension, Foster had also missed a pair of games due to a hamstring injury and was questionable for the team’s contest against Tampa Bay this afternoon. Given his obvious talent, and given the fact that the current allegations were made by the same woman who admitted she fabricated previous allegations, it will be interesting to see if any teams put in a waiver claim. He will officially hit waivers at 4pm ET tomorrow.
Minor NFL Transactions: 11/24/18
Here are Saturday’s minor moves:
San Francisco 49ers
- Promoted from practice squad: RB Jeff Wilson
- Waived: QB Tom Savage
Seattle Seahawks
- Promoted from practice squad: WR Keenan Reynolds
- Waived: TE Darrell Daniels
Nick Mullens To Remain 49ers' QB
- Given how Nick Mullens has played through two starts, he’ll remain the 49ers‘ starting quarterback on an open-ended basis, head coach Kyle Shanahan told reporters, including Eric Branch of the San Francisco Chronicle (Twitter link). Mullens, who started in place on an injured C.J. Beathard in Week 9, completed 73% of his passes and tossed three touchdowns in his first career NFL action. While he came back to Earth a bit in Week 10 (250 yards, one touchdown, and two interceptions), he still nearly led San Francisco to a victory over the Giants on Monday night. In the midst of what’s become a lost season, the 49ers might be well-served to get a full look at Mullens, who went undrafted out of Southern Mississippi in 2017.
Minor NFL Transactions: 11/12/18
Today’s minor moves will be posted here:
Denver Broncos
- Signed: C Gino Gradkowski
Detroit Lions:
- Waived: CB Lenzy Pipkins
Jacksonville Jaguars
- Signed: TE Ben Koyack
- Waived: TE David Grinnage
San Francisco 49ers
- Promoted from practice squad: RB Matthew Dayes
- Waived: S Tyvis Powell
49ers To Promote Practice Squad Running Back
- With Raheem Mostert on injured reserve and Matt Breida seemingly always banged up, the 49ers’ backfield is currently a bit thin. The team is expected to call up a running back from the practice squad ahead of their game on Monday, and it’s likely to be Jeff Wilson Jr., according to Cam Inman of the Mercury News. The team also has ex-Brown Matthew Dayes on the practice squad.