» EXPECTATIONS BIG FOR SAMUEL IN 2020
SANTA CLARA — Joe Staley had just played his last NFL game. The visiting locker room inside Miami Gardens’ Hard Rock Stadium was almost empty. Many of his teammates had already gotten dressed, packed their things and left the site of Super Bowl LIV, a devastating loss to the Kansas City Chiefs.
Staley, the team’s longest-tenured and most-influential player, spotted a promising rookie who had become one of the 49ers’ most intriguing weapons. He approached receiver Deebo Samuel for an end-of-season embrace and shared some quiet words.
“Basically, he’s one of the most talented rookies I’ve ever seen,” said Staley, who retired last month after 13 seasons. “I was just telling him how important this offseason is and he can be the greatest receiver in the NFL. Just to work really hard this offseason and use this as motivation.”
Samuel, a South Carolina alum, set a Super Bowl record for a receiver with 53 rushing yards while leading the team with five catches. It capped an impressive debut campaign that included 802 receiving yards in the regular season, the second most by a rookie in team history behind Jerry Rice’s 927 yards in 1985. Samuel’s three 100-yard games were the most by a 49ers rookie ever.
Samuel saw his production make a leap as his rookie year wore on and he got more comfortable in coach Kyle Shanahan’s complex offense. Samuel averaged 31 yards over his first six games and 68 over his final nine. The latter average would pace out to 1,093 yards over a full season.
Samuel became known for his toughness and physicality. According to Pro Football Focus, he ranked third among all receivers with 8.5 yards after the catch. His 18 avoided tackles tied for first.
“Deebo is as fearless of a rookie as I’ve ever been around,” Shanahan said in February at the scouting combine. “He’s extremely tough, wants the ball in his hands, will fight for everything, he’ll play injured. The game was never too big for him. The moment was never too big for him and that’s why he helped us huge this year.”
Samuel has spent his first full offseason in the NFL working hard to continue his trajectory toward becoming a No. 1 wideout on an offense that finished third in scoring (29.6 points) and eighth in yardage (374 per game) in 2019. He’s currently in Houston working out at the gym co-owned by Adrian Peterson and new teammate Trent Williams, Staley’s replacement. “Training with these guys is probably the hardest workouts I’ve been doing since I’ve been playing football,” Samuel said on a video conference call this week.
From the 49ers’ perspective, this offseason is particularly important for Samuel. The team recently has seen a number of rookies take steps back in their second years. In 2018, players like cornerback Ahkello Witherspoon and safety Adrian Colbert struggled as NFL sophomores while the team finished with a disappointing record of 4-12 (of course Jimmy Garoppolo’s knee injury was the bigger factor).
Receiver Dante Pettis is the most recent example. He entered his second NFL training camp last summer with a shot to become the team’s No. 1 receiver. Instead, he fell into Shanahan’s dog house because of a lack of urgency and had nine catches for 83 yards in the first six games, leading to San Francisco trading third- and fourth-round picks to the Broncos for veteran receiver Emmanuel Sanders and a fifth-round pick.
It’s unclear if Pettis has a future with the team. The 49ers traded up in the first round of the draft to take Arizona State’s Brandon Aiyuk and added a physical presence in Jauan Jennings in Round 7, who may have been a mid-round pick if not for a pair of suspensions while at Tennessee.
Which is why Samuel is such an important figure for San Francisco in 2020. Elevating to the team’s top option after his excellent rookie year would go a long way toward stabilizing a receiving corps that needs to take a step forward with Sanders gone to the New Orleans Saints.
The 49ers would be in a great spot if Samuel returned for Year 2 the same way tight end George Kittle did in 2018, when he quickly rose to stardom thanks to a rigorous offseason workout regimen that led his record-setting season with 1,377 yards.
Kittle became one of San Francisco’s leaders both vocally and by example. It sounds like Samuel is taking a similar approach, even if the offseason is marred by a quarantine induced by a worldwide pandemic.
Soon after the draft, Samuel wanted to reach out to Aiyuk, through position coach Wes Welker, to help him acclimate to the league knowing how tricky this offseason could be without on-field practices until training camp, which could get pushed back from it’s late-July start date, and even take place out of state.
“When we drafted him I had texted Wes and asked what his number was because I know how hard it is to be what you want to be in this offense without thinking,” Samuel said. “So I gave him a call and I was just like ‘Hey man, I just want you to know it’s going to take time,’ and he has it harder than I do because I was around the coaches and able to use the coaches as much as possible.
“With him, he (gets) a Zoom call and it’s hard to listen to a guy telling you what to do and not being able to go out there on the field. So I was just like ‘hey man, you just need to lock in but if you need anything, you are free to call me, KB (Kendrick Bourne) or even Wes.’ I was just trying to tell him what we want to do this year that we didn’t do last year.”
It sounds like Samuel took Staley’s post-Super Bowl advice to heart.