San Francisco Promoted A Fourth Tight End And Worked Out Three More

San Francisco promoted tight end Brayden Willis to its 53-man roster on Tuesday morning. Then it worked out three more tight ends.

The promotion went up on the club's newsroom at 11 a.m. Pacific and onto its transaction log under 09/15. It fills the roster spot Alfred Collins vacated when he went on injured reserve on September 10, which had stood open for five days, so the active roster is back at 53 and nobody had to come off it. The club also signed defensive lineman McKinnley Jackson to the practice squad.

The workouts are the part that carries further. Off the NFL's transaction report, published Tuesday afternoon by David Bonilla at 49ers Webzone and by Kyle Posey at Niners Nation: tight ends Lawrence Cager, Tanner Conner and Jack Stoll, and defensive tackles Larry Ogunjobi and Daniel Ekuale. Three of the five play the position the club had just spent a roster spot on.

Jake Tonges is still on the active roster, and five days after the opener nothing has been published about his knee.

Kyle Shanahan, after the 27-7 win at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, as 49ers Webzone carried him on Tuesday: "It wasn't good. I mean, it's not an ACL. It's MCL, I believe. But there's some issues with it that we've got to see how it is." Testing waited on the flight home. No imaging result has published since, nobody has attached a number of weeks to it, and selecting the Week 2 tab on the club's injury report page at 2:53 p.m. Pacific Tuesday returned no San Francisco table at all. The first Week 2 report follows Wednesday's practice, which is the first document the club owes the league on either of its two hurt men.

The choice San Francisco did not make is the one that carries information. Putting Tonges on injured reserve this week would cost him Miami, Arizona, Denver and Seattle, the four-game minimum the designation has carried all season, and the first game he could play would be Washington at Levi's on Monday, October 19. The club promoted a fourth tight end instead. That buys a body for Sunday and commits to nothing.

Posey wrote Tuesday that he expects Willis to replace Tonges on the roster and expects San Francisco to place rookie receiver De'Zhaun Stribling on injured reserve before the weekend. Both are his expectations. The club has filed neither.

The position played 84 snaps on 65 offensive plays in Melbourne, which is why a fourth body is not depth for its own sake.

The Playtime Percentage pages of the NFL's official game book for Week 1 put Luke Farrell at 46 offensive snaps and 71 percent, George Kittle at 30 and 46 percent, and Tonges at eight and 12 percent before the second quarter ended his afternoon. Farrell then played 18 of San Francisco's 20 special-teams snaps, which is the highest special-teams snap share of any 49er in the game.

Kittle started and played fewer than half the offensive snaps, eight months after tearing his Achilles in the January wild-card win over Philadelphia and seven weeks after the club opened camp by putting him on the physically unable to perform list. He was a limited participant on both practice days the Week 1 injury report carries a value for, with no game status beside his name. That is a managed workload, and the staff chose it with three tight ends healthy. It has two now.

What Willis is, precisely.

Three NFL seasons, all in San Francisco, 23 regular-season games, and no receptions in any of them, off NFL.com's career page. The club's own release credits him with nine special-teams tackles across those 23 games, six of them in six games last season, and four postseason appearances. He blocks and he plays on kick teams. PFF ranked him first among the 49ers' tight ends in special-teams grade for the 2026 preseason, which is one vendor's ordinal and not a fact about football, and it points the same way everything else here does.

He has also been on and off this roster three times in ten days. San Francisco waived him on September 5 to promote long snapper Jon Weeks, re-signed him to the practice squad two days later, and promoted him on Tuesday.

The club's public depth chart still stamps itself September 8. It lists Kittle first at tight end, Tonges second, and Farrell tied for third with Willis. The game book has Farrell ahead of Kittle by 16 offensive snaps. That same chart still lists Collins first at right defensive tackle, and Collins has been on injured reserve since September 10.

Three tight ends came in on the same afternoon.

Lawrence Cager, Tanner Conner and Jack Stoll are all veteran free agents, and none of the three had been signed as of Tuesday evening. A workout is not a transaction and it moves nothing. Three of them in one day, on the day a fourth tight end was promoted onto the 53, is a club that does not expect Tonges back soon.

The defensive line got a practice-squad body, and the 53-man spot still has not been spent there.

Jackson was a third-round pick of Cincinnati in 2024 and has 22 NFL games with one start. He goes to the practice squad, not the roster. San Francisco has four defensive linemen on Reserve/Injured, Collins and Sam Okuayinonu and Mikail Kamara and Andrew Farmer II, and Mykel Williams on Reserve/Physically Unable to Perform. Ogunjobi and Ekuale, the two veterans who worked out, had not been signed either.

The count, name by name, read at 2:50 p.m. Pacific Tuesday.

Fifty-six rows under Active on the club's roster page, 12 on Reserve/Injured, two on Reserve/Physically Unable to Perform, 14 on the practice squad. One of the 56 is Jackson, whom the club's own release says it signed to the practice squad, and his row carries no jersey number. Two more are KhaDarel Hodge and Ogbo Okoronkwo, whose Week 1 elevations the club's September 10 release called standard. That leaves 53 signed to the active roster and 17 on the practice squad, which is this club's maximum.

Stribling is on the Active table, where he has been since he hurt the ankle on September 10. Ian Rapoport reported on September 13 that it is a deltoid sprain and that he is out at least a month. Four days from kickoff, the club has designated nothing.

Sources: 49ers.com newsroom, transaction log, roster page, depth chart and injury report page, all read between 2:49 and 2:54 p.m. Pacific on September 15; the NFL's official game book for Week 1; NFL.com career statistics; David Bonilla, 49ers Webzone; Kyle Posey, Niners Nation; Ian Rapoport, NFL Network.