Four Hundred And Forty Punt Returns Since Ted Ginn Jr. Scored The Last One

San Francisco has returned 440 punts since the last one reached the end zone. They gained 3,826 yards, an average of 8.7 a return, and none of them scored.

The last one belongs to Ted Ginn Jr. ESPN's scoring summary for that game has him taking a kickoff back 102 yards at 3:56 of the fourth quarter against Seattle on September 11, 2011, and then fielding a punt and running it back 55 yards at 3:05 of the same quarter, in a 33 to 17 win. Fifty-one seconds of game clock between the two. The 49ers returned 44 punts that season and exactly one of them scored. Fourteen seasons have gone by since and the number is still one.

What the fourteen years look like when you count them#

The league's own team statistics carry a punt return line for every club in every season, and San Francisco's read the same way from 2012 forward. Thirty-six returns for 378 yards in 2012. Thirty-five for 312 the year after that. The floor is 2018, when the 49ers returned 31 punts for 180 yards, 5.8 apiece, and exactly one of those 31 gained twenty yards.

Then 2023. Thirty-four returns, 273 yards, and not one of them reached twenty yards. A full year of fielding punts and taking what the coverage allowed.

Across all fourteen seasons: 35 of the 440 returns gained twenty yards or more, which is two and a half a year. Two of the 440 reached forty. The longest is 66 yards, in 2025, and that season is also the best of the fourteen by average at 11.6.

Set that against 2011 on its own. Forty-four returns, 544 yards, 12.4 a return, ten gains of twenty or more and three of forty or more, one touchdown. One of the fifteen seasons holds three of the five returns of forty yards or more.

Cowing went 83 and it does not count#

Jacob Cowing fielded a punt at the San Francisco 17 late in the first half at the Chargers on August 20 and ran 83 yards to the end zone. That is seventeen yards longer than the longest punt return San Francisco has produced in a regular-season game since Ginn, and it is longer than every one of the 440.

It happened in a preseason game. The league does not enter preseason returns in the record, so the drought sits exactly where it sat on August 19.

The distinction matters more than it usually would, because the whole case for keeping Cowing is built on the play that does not count. His preseason as a returner is two punts. One went three yards and the other went 83.

He has not returned a punt since August 20#

Cowing hurt his groin during the last week of camp. Kyle Shanahan, at his August 25 availability: "Cowing has a groin. He's similar with Mike, hoping to get him back next week." He did not dress at Las Vegas on Thursday and appears on the game book's did-not-play list. David Bonilla, writing at 49ers Webzone on August 26, has him and cornerback Upton Stout expected back at practice next week, and reports that the club was missing 21 players at Tuesday's session, the final full practice of camp.

Next week starts after the roster is due. San Francisco has to be at 53 by 3 p.m. Pacific on Sunday, August 30, and whatever the staff decides about the punt return job, it decides without seeing him field another punt.

The other men in the competition finished their preseasons on the field. The club waived Junior Bergen on August 12, per its own transaction log. Jordan Watkins and Will Pauling split the four returns against Tennessee on August 13 for 18 yards between them, off that game's book. Cowing has the only return of the preseason that went anywhere, out of a game he has not played in since.

Somebody on Sunday's roster fields the next San Francisco punt, in Melbourne against the Rams on September 10. The 440 behind it are a reasonable guide to what usually happens next, and the 83 yards in August are the reason the club has spent a month looking for the exception.