Six Grade Changes, Eight Transactions, And Not One Name Has Crossed The Line

The 49ers have made eight roster transactions since camp opened on July 25. Four men in, four men out. Over the same six days this site's 53-man tracker has changed six grades, four of them down and two up, across three practices and a jog-through.

The number of players it now projects onto the initial 53-man roster who were not projected there the morning camp opened is zero.

That is the finding, and it is worth more than the movement it sits under. Two counts exist here every week. One is how many grades moved. The other is how many men crossed the line between making this roster and missing it, and only the second is a claim about the roster.

What the number measures, once, so the rest of these columns can lean on it#

The tracker carries 82 players and grades each from 0 to 10. That grade is one thing only: confidence the player is on the initial 53-man roster San Francisco submits at the cutdown, 6pm Eastern on Sunday, August 30. Nine and up is a lock. Seven and eight are near-locks. Four to six is the bubble, where a roster is actually decided. Three and below is a longshot.

It does not measure how good a player is, and it does not measure whether he starts. Romello Height has been taking first-team edge reps opposite Keion White, per Matt Barrows of The Athletic, and his number has not moved once, because a third-round pick on a signed four-year deal was making this roster before he took a snap. Health counts only where it threatens the roster spot rather than the availability, and the rest of this column runs on that distinction.

The six changes, and why none of them crossed anything#

Vederian Lowe went 8 to 7 on Monday the 27th, when the ankle he hurt on his third snap of camp came back a high ankle sprain, per Matt Maiocco of NBC Sports Bay Area. Enrique Cruz Jr. went 7 to 8 the same day, having inherited the backup tackle reps Lowe was taking when he went down. Gracen Halton dropped 7 to 6, a bubble defensive lineman with a bone bruise in his knee and no reps to win a job with. Keion White rose 7 to 8 on Tuesday, when the last of the caveats on his spring leg injury ran out of evidence behind it. Ricky Pearsall went 9 to 8 and Jordan James 8 to 7 on Wednesday.

Six players out of 82. All six were inside the projected 53 before their change and all six are inside it now.

Lowe is the clearest case on the board of a grade moving while a job does not. He signed for two years and $9,250,000 with $5,750,000 guaranteed, and that figure is also his dead-cap number, so releasing him costs San Francisco more than keeping him. Nobody is taking his job. Nobody can afford to. What dropped his grade is that a swing tackle who cannot practice through August is a live candidate to open the season on injured reserve, and injured reserve is not the initial 53.

The count that explains why the bottom of this roster keeps churning#

Here is the part missing from every previous version of this argument.

San Francisco has no open roster spots. Not close to the limit, which is what has been written here and elsewhere for a week. None.

The club's own roster page publishes four tables, and counted individually this morning they read: 87 active, four on the active physically-unable-to-perform list, one on reserve/injured, one on reserve/left squad. Active/PUP is a camp designation whose players occupy roster spots, and the reserve lists are not. So the count against the offseason limit is 87 plus four, or 91.

That limit is 90, or 91 with the International Player Pathway exemption, and the 49ers carry Isaac Alarcon inside the active table at number 67. Which exemption he holds has never been established here, and this desk twice declined to reach a conclusion for want of it. Unnecessary, as it turns out. Under the pathway reading Alarcon is the 91st body against a ceiling of 91. Under a commissioner's exemption he does not count, and 90 sit against 90. Both readings give zero open spots.

Which is why every subtraction this camp has produced came from below the cut line, where subtractions cost nothing. Tanner McLachlan entered at 2 on the 25th and a tight end was waived. Kevin Givens entered at 4 on the 26th and a defensive lineman was waived. K.J. Henry and Quinton Bell entered at 2 apiece on Wednesday, and the two who left as corresponding moves were linemen this board never carried. Four in, four out, all eight below the line, and a projected 53 that did not notice.

The test arrives before this column does#

Barrows reported Thursday that the 49ers plan to sign tight end Josiah Deguara. He appears on neither the club's transaction log nor its roster page, both checked at 3:05pm Pacific, so he is not graded here and enters on the day the club processes him.

He is also the first live test of the count above. A 29-year-old blocking tight end with 53 catches in 77 games joining a roster with no room on it means a name comes off the same day. Watch which name.

What actually moves this thing#

Pads, on Friday. Every rep graded on this board was recorded in shorts, which is the honest limit on all of it and bites hardest in the competitions where half the job is contact.

After that, a calendar on somebody. Three of the four drops this week belong to men without a return date: Lowe, Halton, and Pearsall, whose knee is an availability question this board answers with a number and does not answer any other way. None of the three is fighting for a job. All three are fighting the schedule for a place on the initial 53 rather than a place on the injured list.

One call, on the record#

Filed July 29 and untouched by anything since: between that date and the opener against the Rams in Melbourne on September 10, the 49ers do not add a defensive end or outside linebacker with more than 10 career regular-season sacks, by signing, trade or waiver claim. Henry and Bell were excluded by name when it was written and do not falsify it.

Not a safe call. This team finished last in the league in sacks with 20 and carries the most cap space in the NFL, north of $70 million. Nobody has put a date on Nick Bosa's ramp, and cap space does not expire.

Sam Kezar, filed July 29, resolving September 10.

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Sources. The 49ers' official roster page, counted table by table July 30, and the club's official transaction log, checked the same afternoon; roster-limit and exemption treatment per league roster rules, with Spotrac and OverTheCap reconciling to the same 91 once Alarcon and the reserve lists are placed. Matt Barrows, The Athletic, on the Deguara signing and the first-team edge reps. Matt Maiocco, NBC Sports Bay Area, on the Lowe and Halton injuries. NFL.com on the August 30 cutdown deadline. Lowe's contract confirmed on both OverTheCap and Spotrac. Deguara's career figures pulled July 30. Grades are this site's own and are maintained daily on the 53-man tracker.