Nate Hobbs Made The 53 On Sunday And Went On Injured Reserve On Monday

Nate Hobbs pulled a groin at the joint practice with Tennessee on August 11. Kyle Shanahan said two days later that he would be out a few weeks. He did not dress for either preseason game, he does not appear on the participation page of either game book, and he has still never taken a snap for San Francisco. He made the initial 53-man roster on Sunday anyway, and by Monday afternoon he was on injured reserve.

The order of those last two things is the reason he is still under contract with the 49ers.

San Francisco announced four moves on Monday. The club's own release runs them in two sentences: "The 49ers announced they have re-signed S Ashtyn Davis and P Corliss Waitman to one-year deals. In order to make room on the roster, the team placed CB Nate Hobbs and LB Nick Martin on the Injured Reserve List." The reason the club gives for the placements is roster space, and it names no injury. Myles Simmons at Pro Football Talk, filing at 4:24 p.m. Eastern, has them as a groin for Hobbs and a hamstring for Martin.

The date is the mechanism, and it decided whether he stayed#

A club may designate two players to return from injured reserve when it cuts to 53. San Francisco spent both on Sunday, on Christian Kirk and Austen Pleasants, and the asterisks are on the club's own release. A third man placed on injured reserve during that reduction, without a designation, is finished for the season. Brett Toth and Nick Zakelj went that way on Sunday.

Placing a man on injured reserve the day after the initial roster is set works differently. No cutdown designation is involved, so no season ends. He must miss at least four games, and after that he is eligible to return, drawing on the eight returns from injured reserve a club is allowed across a season. San Francisco plays the Rams at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on September 10, then Miami, Arizona and Denver. The earliest game Hobbs can play in is October 11 at Seattle.

So the club's alternative to Sunday's arrangement was not putting Hobbs on injured reserve a day early. It was releasing him. The money did not argue against keeping him either way: Over The Cap's release scenarios put his dead money at $3,110,000 against a cap saving of $270,000, so the guarantee was owed whatever the 49ers did, and only the roster spot was ever in play.

Matt Maiocco wrote all of this down a day early. In his Sunday analysis of the initial roster for NBC Sports Bay Area, Hobbs "has a groin injury that could land him on injured reserve as early as Monday" and "is expected to return and make a contribution before the end of the season."

Martin's hamstring is two weeks older than the roster#

Nick Martin sustained the hamstring injury in the second preseason game, against the Chargers on August 20. ESPN's camp file had him held out of practice on Saturday, August 22, with the injury dated to Thursday. This board flagged him as a candidate to open the season on injured reserve on August 25, off Maiocco, and took a point off his grade rather than moving him outside the projection.

Maiocco's Sunday piece named him too: Martin "sustained a hamstring injury in the second preseason game, and it is likely he will go on injured reserve on Monday. He is expected to be back toward the middle of the season."

Martin is a third-round pick out of Oklahoma State, taken 75th overall in 2025. His club page credits him with seven games and no starts as a rookie, eleven combined tackles, one forced fumble and one interception. Sunday's roster carried seven linebackers, which is one more than San Francisco usually keeps, and the reading around the beat was that the number was temporary and that Martin or Luke Gifford, who has a hamstring of his own, would come off it. Martin came off it. The six left are Fred Warner, Dre Greenlaw, Tatum Bethune, Gifford, Garret Wallow and Jaden Dugger.

Davis and Waitman came back the way they left#

Sunday's release put fourteen names under "Released" and nineteen under "Waived," and the distinction is the one that mattered on Monday. Ashtyn Davis and Corliss Waitman were on the released list. Simmons notes that neither was subject to waivers, so neither could be claimed by another club and both were free to sign wherever they liked, including back in Santa Clara.

David Bonilla at 49ers Webzone read the arrangement as temporary on Sunday afternoon, while it was still a reading of intent rather than a transaction. It is a transaction now.

The punter is on the roster. The long snapper is not.#

Sunday's roster carried one specialist, kicker Eddy Piñeiro, and no punter. Waitman's return closes that. He is listed on the club's active roster as the punter.

Jon Weeks is not. He is one of thirteen players the club lists on its practice squad, alongside Isaac Alarcon, Khalil Dinkins, Jalen Graham, Wesley Grimes, KhaDarel Hodge, Sincere McCormick, Drake Nugent, Ogbo Okoronkwo, Will Pauling, Jakob Robinson, Jalen Stroman and Sebastian Valdez. A club may elevate two practice-squad players to the game-day roster in any one week, and may elevate any single player no more than three times in a season. A fourth appearance requires signing him to the active roster. San Francisco has seventeen games and one long snapper, and he is on the wrong list for fourteen of them.

Nobody was claimed, and two men were lost#

Waiver claims were awarded Monday at 10 a.m. Pacific, with San Francisco 27th in the order. The 49ers claimed nobody. Two of the men they waived on Sunday were claimed by other clubs: cornerback Darrell Luter Jr. by Las Vegas and defensive lineman Bryson Eason by Kansas City, per 49ers Webzone.

Two of the eight offensive linemen San Francisco lost on Sunday are back in the building on the practice squad, Alarcon and Nugent. Webzone also reports the club signing tackle and guard Foster Sarell, who is not on the club's own practice squad page at this read. And Jarrett Patterson, the center acquired from Houston on Sunday for a 2027 seventh-round pick and then missing from every document the club published that afternoon, is now listed on the roster page as an offensive lineman out of Notre Dame, in a line of nine.

Hobbs signed with the 49ers in March, the week Green Bay released him. If he plays at Seattle on October 11, it will be seven months later.