Jalen Stroman Played Every Defensive Snap And More Special Teams Than Anybody

Jalen Stroman played all 66 of San Francisco's defensive snaps at Las Vegas on Thursday. He also played 21 special-teams snaps, which is 72 percent of that work and more than any other 49er took. Both numbers come off the Playtime Percentage page of the official game book, where the 100 percent row on defense is his.

Ashtyn Davis started the same game at the same position. He played 39 of the 66 defensive snaps and two on special teams.

That is one afternoon, and one afternoon of a preseason game whose starters mostly stayed in Santa Clara. It is also the last football either man will play before the roster is due. San Francisco is off Friday, Saturday and Sunday, which Kyle Shanahan said on Thursday night while explaining something else, so the cut to 53 at 3 p.m. Pacific on Sunday lands inside the gap. No practice, no depth chart, no availability. The snap counts from Las Vegas are the last new evidence anybody gets.

Six names sit on the line. Here they are, with the reasoning, and all six are Called Shots.

The last three in#

Jalen Stroman is on San Francisco's initial 53-man roster. The tracker had him at 5 and outside the projection as recently as Friday afternoon, and that grade is now wrong. Special teams is the currency of the last defensive spot, and the game book settles who is spending it: Stroman's 21 snaps beat the next 49ers on the list, who sat at 15. He was also the undrafted rookie the coaching staff left on the field for every defensive snap of a game it was still evaluating. PFF's grades from that night, published Friday by David Bonilla at 49ers Webzone, gave him the best tackling grade in the game.

Nate Hobbs is on it too. This is the least glamorous call of the six. Hobbs signed a one-year deal in March, has a groin injury, has not played a preseason snap and is on the Did Not Play list in the Las Vegas game book. The tracker has him outside at 5, and that is the reading of a man judged on what he has shown. A club does not sign a veteran corner in March, watch him miss August, and then hand him to the waiver wire in a room where Ephesians Prysock left Thursday's game with a shoulder after two defensive snaps and Renardo Green's hamstring imaging has never been published. Injured corners with real contracts get seats on Sunday. What happens to them on Monday is a separate question.

Jacob Cowing is on it, and that call has been on the ledger since August 23, so nothing new gets filed for it. He missed the finale with a groin injury and appears on the Did Not Play list. The case has not moved: 83 of his 86 punt-return yards this preseason came on one play, which is a thin record and still the best return work anybody on this roster produced.

The last three out#

Jordan Watkins is not on the initial 53. He did more in Las Vegas than any other 49er the club is still deciding about. He started, played 53 of the 61 offensive snaps, drew eight targets and caught four of them for 64 yards, carried three times for 27, returned two punts and two kickoffs. PFF put him fifth among the highest-graded 49ers on offense that night.

All of that is real and none of it is the reason to keep him. Kyle Posey of Niners Nation, who watched the same tape, wrote Friday morning that Watkins "is the kind of player who has preseason production in the box score, but once you go under the hood and focus on him, I'm not sure he's an NFL player," and described him turtling on his first kickoff return and waiting on a block instead of delivering it. That is a film judgment against a box score, and on a receiver room already carrying six names the box score is the weaker document. Watkins is outside on the tracker at 6, and this call keeps him there.

Ashtyn Davis is not on it. He is inside the projection at 6, so this contradicts the board and it is the harder half of the Stroman call. Davis started, took 59 percent of the defensive snaps, and played two special-teams snaps all night. PFF's charting had him tied for the most missed tackles of any 49ers defender in the game. A fourth safety who does not cover kicks is a luxury on a roster that has to fit ten offensive linemen and seven linebackers into 53 seats. His contract carries minimal guarantees, which is the club telling you in March what it expected to be deciding in August.

Ogbo Okoronkwo is not on it, and that call has been on the ledger since August 5 as half of a paired take that also has KhaDarel Hodge making the roster. Nothing new gets filed. The fresh evidence cuts against it and gets printed anyway: Okoronkwo started at Las Vegas, played 29 of 66 defensive snaps and eight on special teams, and PFF's grades put him among the five highest-graded 49ers on defense. What has not changed is the shape of the room. He signed on August 5 behind a defensive line the tracker grades at nine deep, six of them at 8 or better, and a veteran playing 44 percent of the defensive snaps in a finale is being looked at rather than counted on. The Hodge half of that take is in worse shape than the Okoronkwo half, and both halves have to hold.

What the announced list will not tell you#

Sunday's roster is not the roster that flies to Melbourne, and the difference is injured reserve. Shanahan named Christian Kirk, Vederian Lowe and Nick Martin as candidates to start the season there on August 25. Matt Barrows of The Athletic, in a projection published Friday, has Lowe beginning on injured reserve and Austen Pleasants inheriting the swing tackle job, with Drake Nugent or Doug Kramer Jr. possibly in uniform in Week 1 if Brett Toth's concussion symptoms keep him off a 16-hour flight.

Every one of those moves happens after the deadline, and that is why these six calls are written the way they are. Each scores off the club's announced initial 53 and nothing else. Practice squad is not the 53. A signing on Monday is not the 53. A man placed on injured reserve from that list counts as having made it, which is the standard this ledger has used since the Kaelon Black call in July.

Two open calls belong in that light. Kevin Givens was waived on August 5, ten days after re-signing, and has not been on this roster since; the take that he makes the initial 53, filed under Grant Lombard's byline on July 27, is going to grade wrong on Sunday. And Brett Toth is carried here as off the list, filed August 19, on the reading that a concussion disclosed August 8 with no published clearance ends a backup center's summer. Barrows is describing a Toth who is on the roster and unavailable, which is the outcome that would grade that call wrong. It scores as filed.

The transaction log at 49ers.com carried nothing dated later than August 27 when it was read at 4:57 a.m. Pacific on Saturday, and ESPN's separate transaction file carried nothing later than the Patrick Taylor Jr. injury settlement on August 28. Nobody named above has been cut yet. Sunday at 3 p.m. settles all six.

Sources: official NFL game book, San Francisco at Las Vegas, August 27, 2026, Allegiant Stadium (lineups, Did Not Play, Playtime Percentage, individual statistics); 49ers.com transaction log; ESPN transactions; David Bonilla, 49ers Webzone, August 28; Kyle Posey, Niners Nation, August 28; Matt Barrows, The Athletic, August 28; Grab Some Pine 53-man tracker.