The San Francisco 49ers have struggled to get anything going offensively this season and currently stand at 3-5. On the field, quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo has struggled while Brandon Aiyuk faced a lot of struggles to live up to the hype from last season. The return of wide receiver George Kittle certainly helped and the team does seem to be trending in the right direction even if their record isn’t.
All of which is to say that the franchise feels like it has the pieces it needs to move forward but would love the flexibility to make moves as needed in order to improve. That’s perhaps part of the reason they decided to waive wide receiver Jalen Hurd on Thursday.
The #49ers have waived WR Jalen Hurd.
Additional roster moves:
— San Francisco 49ers (@49ers) November 11, 2021
It’s a true bummer for Hurd, who has been unable to avoid injuries so far in his NFL career. The highly touted receiver was drafted out of Baylor in the third round of the 2019 NFL Draft but was placed on injured reserve with a back injury and was unable to play that season. Hopes were high he’d get a chance to shine in 2020 but he tore his ACL during a running drill at training camp and missed that as well. The crushing news continued in 2021 when Hurd was placed on the injured reserve list with a knee injury in September.
Despite being with the 49ers for two-and-a-half seasons, Hurd never played a down for them.
It’s a shift from the 49ers from what they thought in September when Hurd injured himself for the third time. At the time, it seemed like they were still committed to seeing him get on the field at some point.
“He’s such an intriguing player because he can do so many different things,” Lynch said in September. “And he’s a physically-imposing type player, so he fits what we do really well. ACL [injuries] — some go very smooth. And others, you have these little deals where you’re going great, and then you run into a rough patch where the things get irritated. And unfortunately, it just happened for him at the wrong time.”
Hopefully, Hurd can get healthy and catch on with another NFL team in order to get that chance to play in a regular-season game.
[49ers]
