The 49ers Have Made Five Running Back Moves Since August 2, And Thursday's Came Five Hours Before Kickoff
Patrick Taylor Jr. went to Reserve/Injured and Khalil Herbert was re-signed three days after his release, announced together at 1:40pm. The club's active table carried six backs at the 3:09pm read and Herbert was not yet one of them.
The 49ers announced two roster moves at 1:40 on Thursday afternoon. Running back Patrick Taylor Jr. went to the Reserve/Injured list and running back Khalil Herbert was signed to a one-year deal, three days after the club released him. Kickoff at SoFi Stadium is 7:00pm, five hours and twenty minutes later.
Nobody from this site was there. Everything below is sourced to published reporting and to the club's own pages, read in a browser Thursday afternoon.
That is the fifth time since August 2 that San Francisco has changed the composition of its running back room, counted off the club's own transaction log: Herbert signed on the second, Zamir White signed on the twelfth, Herbert released on the seventeenth, and Herbert re-signed and Taylor placed on Reserve/Injured on the twentieth. The roster is due on August 30.
There was no practice Thursday and none Wednesday beyond a walk-through closed to media, so Tuesday's joint session in El Segundo is still the last participation information anybody has.
The club's active table carried six running backs when it was counted at 3:09pm: Christian McCaffrey, No. 23; Kaelon Black, No. 26; Jordan James, No. 29; Zamir White, No. 30; Sincere McCormick, No. 35; and Kyle Juszczyk, No. 44, who is the fullback. Herbert was on neither that table nor the injured list ninety minutes after the club announced him. Three of those numbers are shared with a man who may also be in uniform tonight: safety Ashtyn Davis 29, cornerback Eli Apple 30, cornerback Ephesians Prysock 35.
The reason the club keeps buying backs from outside is that the two competing for the job have not been on a practice field together once this month. James fractured a rib and went onto the injury list on July 29. ESPN's camp log has him doing side work on August 15, the first time he had been seen since, and he was on the club's did-not-practise list again on Tuesday. Black carried an adductor from the sixth day of camp until he came back in full pads on the fourteenth, which was Tuesday. McCaffrey, listed under soreness, was not out there either. A club that cannot hold a practice with enough healthy backs signs one, and it has now done that three times.
David Bonilla, writing for 49ers Webzone, has the placement ending Taylor's season for the second consecutive year, and Niners Wire headlined it the same way. The club said neither, and named no injury. He signed here in April 2024, four years after Green Bay took him as an undrafted free agent in 2020, and ran for a career-high 183 yards that autumn. The last thing the club's own account has him doing in a game is a one-yard touchdown run against Tennessee on August 13, on the play after De'Zhaun Stribling's sideline catch.
Black is the man the afternoon is really about. He was the 90th pick of the April draft and came back Tuesday in full pads, taking carries through team and red-zone work and one into the end zone. Brock Purdy, asked about him: "I thought he looked good hitting the hole and running hard." Kyle Shanahan said Black would "most likely" play Thursday.
Isaac Guerendo, No. 31, has been on the Active/Physically Unable to Perform list since July 26, the whole of camp. The club has to resolve that designation by the August 30 deadline.
On the board. Herbert re-enters at a 2 and outside the projection, the grade he carried before his release. Taylor goes to 0 and out of it entirely, since a player on Reserve/Injured before the cut is ineligible for the initial 53. McCaffrey at 10, Juszczyk at 9, Black at 8 and James at 7 are unchanged and remain the four. Nobody crossed the cut line for the third straight day.
One real correction was made to that board Thursday. C.J. West's row carried his concussion in its label while its data still read healthy, so the injury watch had aged him off; he is yellow now and holds at 8. A second, flagged this morning, was withdrawn. Stribling's row was said to have misdated the opener and had not: San Francisco played Tennessee twice in three days, and he caught seven passes in each, in team drills on the eleventh and for 63 yards in the game on the thirteenth.
One preseason game follows this one, at Las Vegas on August 27. Then the roster is due.
