Four Men At Left Guard, And Two Practices Of Evidence

The 49ers have one unsettled job on their offensive line. Last season they filled it nineteen times and used three different players to do it.

Spencer Burford started eleven of those nineteen, both playoff games included. Six went to Connor Colby. Ben Bartch got the other two, the first of them in the Week 1 win at Seattle, before a high ankle sprain in Week 2 removed him from the plan the team had spent August building. Burford signed with the Raiders in free agency. Bartch signed with Detroit in March. Colby is the only one of the three still in the building, and on the opening day of camp he took every first-team rep at left guard.

That is the job. Here is the field, and here is everything two practices have actually produced, which is less than you would hope.

The incumbent, which is the word Foerster chose#

Connor Colby was the 249th pick of the 2025 draft, out of Iowa, where he played 51 games and started 50 of them across right guard, left guard and right tackle, and made first-team All-Big Ten as a senior. A seventh-round pick is not supposed to play as a rookie. Bartch's ankle changed that in Week 2.

Colby appeared in 13 games last season and started six. Published snap counts for that year do not quite agree: one accounting has him at 447 snaps at left guard and four more at right guard, while Niners Nation's total for the season is 454. The gap is three snaps and it changes nothing. He is the only guard on this roster with meaningful snaps at this position in this offense, and that is the whole basis of his lead.

Chris Foerster, the offensive line coach who is holding head coach duties while Kyle Shanahan works through concussion protocol, gave the state of play after Sunday's practice in terms that ESPN's Nick Wagoner and David Bonilla of 49ers Webzone both recorded: "Now, he's the incumbent. Nobody else has done anything to beat him out."

The second sentence does not say Colby won anything.

The veteran who did not play last season#

Robert Jones signed on March 23, reported by Tom Pelissero and written up the same evening by Bonilla. He is 6-4 and 322 pounds, and he has played 49 NFL games with 30 starts and roughly 2,025 offensive snaps, most of them at left guard. Seventeen of those starts came in one season, 2024, when he played every game for Miami. Dallas signed him after it, he hurt his neck in training camp, he went on season-ending injured reserve on August 8, and he did not take a snap in 2025.

He is reported healthy. That is the load-bearing sentence in his file and it is also the one nobody outside the building can check, which is true of every player coming off a neck injury in July.

Colton McKivitz put the two of them in the same breath on May 29, in comments Bonilla wrote up: "you're going to have Rob Jones, another explosive guy coming out of Miami," and "it's going to be a fun battle in July for that spot." On Colby, from the same availability: "I think Connor Colby's come a long way," and "to see him come out and play faster, it's good to see."

Nobody agrees on how many candidates there are#

Carver Willis was the 127th pick in April, a tackle at Washington who started ten games at left tackle there last season and is being moved inside. Six college seasons, 45 games, most of them at Kansas State before the transfer to Washington. Guard is a different job from tackle, and one camp is not much time to learn it.

Brett Toth is the fourth name, and the boards do not agree that he is in this at all. This site's 53-man tracker lists Toth in the left guard competition alongside Colby, Jones and Willis. Matt Maiocco's July 25 rundown of the five 49ers camp competitions names three candidates at left guard and Toth is not among them; he is carried elsewhere as the backup center. The disagreement is small, it is real, and the first published rep count from an inside period will settle it.

What two practices produced#

One sentence.

Wagoner, at Sunday's practice: "He took all the reps with the starters Sunday, though Chris Foerster said Robert Jones will also compete there." All of them. Not most, not a heavy majority. That is the single most useful line published about this battle so far, and it comes from the first practice of camp.

Monday produced nothing on left guard whatsoever. The team's own day-two story, written by Brooke Evans, covers the running backs, two defensive interceptions and Brock Purdy on the speed in the receiver room. Maiocco's day-two report is an injury list: a high ankle sprain for Vederian Lowe, a calf strain for Christian Kirk, a knee bone bruise for Gracen Halton, a back injury for Andrew Farmer II, and cramps for Romello Height, who was carted off and about whom Raheem Morris said afterward there was no real concern. Five names, none of them a guard.

That is not a criticism of the coverage. Five players leaving a July practice is the story on the day it happens.

Tuesday did not add anything either. The club held its first jog-through of camp and made nobody available to the media, so nothing about this competition has been reported since Sunday afternoon. Two practices really is the whole file.

What separation is going to look like#

Watch the rotation, not the highlights. Colby taking all the first-team reps for a week is information about the staff's confidence. Colby and Jones alternating by period is different information and it is worse news for Colby, because a second-year seventh-round pick who is genuinely ahead of a 30-game starter does not need to be re-checked against him every afternoon.

Then there are three actual games: August 13 against Tennessee, August 20 at the Chargers, August 27 at Las Vegas. Interior line work is one of the few things in preseason football that transfers, because a guard either handles a three-technique or he does not, and the film says which.

The call#

Connor Colby starts at left guard against the Rams in Melbourne on September 10.

The reasoning is incumbency plus the calendar. Colby has about 450 snaps in this scheme and Jones has none, and there are 45 days for a 27-year-old coming off a lost season to close that gap while also learning the offense. Foerster's sentence cuts the other way, and if Jones opens the Tennessee game with the starters this call is in trouble by the morning of August 14. It is filed with a date on it either way.