The 49ers Released Robert Jones And Traded For A Lineman Seven Minutes Later

Robert Jones was released on Sunday at 1:35 p.m. Pacific, reported by Ian Rapoport of NFL Media, who wrote that Jones had been running with the first team in camp before a calf strain. Jones signed with San Francisco in March. He spent most of the summer as one of the men taking snaps at left guard, which is the job this roster has not filled since the spring.

Seven minutes later the 49ers traded for a replacement. Tom Pelissero reported the acquisition of Jarrett Patterson from Houston at 1:42 p.m.; Adam Schefter reported the price, a 2027 seventh-round pick. Patterson came into the league as a sixth-round pick out of Notre Dame in 2023 and has spent three seasons with the Texans, appearing in 39 games with 21 starts. He played mostly center in his first two years and moved to left guard late last season. Matt Maiocco's read, posted the same minute, was that the 49ers had found their backup center.

The club said nothing for four hours and then said all of it at once#

San Francisco had until 3 p.m. Pacific to reduce from 90 players to 53. For the whole of that afternoon the cutdown ran through named reporters and through the club not at all. The 49ers transaction page, read in a browser at 2:51 p.m. and opened again at 3:04, still ended on August 27 with the Jah Joyner signing and the Victor Dimukeje injured-reserve placement. The newsroom index, read at 2:52, said the same.

At 3:50 p.m., fifty minutes after the deadline and forty-six minutes after that last read, the club published a single release listing thirty-nine moves: fourteen players released, nineteen waived, four to injured reserve and two to the reserve/physically-unable-to-perform list. Twenty-seven of those names had not been reported by anybody.

The release also carries a number the reporting did not. The club's own position-by-position breakdown of the initial roster lists fifty-two players, not fifty-three, and Patterson is not among them. That leaves San Francisco a man short of the limit on its own document, with the trade it made at 1:42 p.m. unaccounted for on it.

The offensive line lost four men in an afternoon and gained one#

Jones leaving does not name a starter. It removes a name, and by the time the club published, it had removed several more.

Brett Toth and Nick Zakelj both went to injured reserve without a designation to return, which ends their seasons. Toth had been in the mix at center since the concussion he was disclosed with on August 8; 49ers Webzone reports that concussion as the injury behind the placement. Austen Pleasants went to injured reserve with a designation to return. Drake Nugent was waived. Doug Kramer Jr. and Brandon Parker were released, and Isaac Alarcón was waived. Counting Jones, that is eight offensive linemen off the roster in one day.

What is left is eight of them: Trent Williams, Carver Willis, Jake Brendel, Dominick Puni, Colton McKivitz, Connor Colby, Vederian Lowe and Enrique Cruz Jr. Willis started the last two preseason games at left guard and took 25 snaps in the finale at Las Vegas. Colby was one of the two players Kyle Shanahan named at the position on August 25. Both are on the list. Nobody from the club has said which one starts.

Patterson complicates the arithmetic rather than settling it, because a center-guard arriving 78 minutes before a deadline is a man the staff has never coached. This site's ledger carries an open call, filed August 5, that Colby is listed at left guard in the Week 1 starting lineup, and that call names Robert Jones as one of the men whose start would grade it wrong. One of the alternatives is gone. The call itself does not resolve until the game book from Melbourne prints a lineup card on September 10.

That lineup card is now eleven days away, and the man across from it changed on Sunday too. Aaron Donald agreed to a one-year deal with the Los Angeles Rams, ending a two-year retirement, on the same afternoon San Francisco cut its interior line to the studs. The Rams play the 49ers at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Thursday, September 10 at 5:35 p.m. Pacific.

A first-round pick will miss a quarter of his second season#

Mykel Williams was placed on the reserve/physically-unable-to-perform list. San Francisco drafted him eleventh overall in 2025 out of Georgia, and he tore the anterior cruciate ligament and the lateral meniscus in his right knee in a Week 9 win over the Giants, having produced 20 tackles and a sack as a rookie. The designation rules him out of at least the first four games. Shanahan had already called him a longshot for Week 1 while saying he was progressing well.

Isaac Guerendo joined him on that list at 2:09 p.m., reported by Jeremy Fowler before the club confirmed it. Guerendo tore a pectoral muscle in a workout in May. Reserve/PUP costs both men the first four games and lets them return to practice as early as Week 3, and neither counts against the roster limit.

Christian Kirk went to injured reserve with a designation to return, which costs him the same four games. The club's release does not name his injury. Shanahan had said before the deadline that Kirk was a candidate for the list.

The trade that unwound in five days#

San Francisco acquired Deion Jones from New Orleans on August 25 in exchange for running back Zamir White. Schefter reported the 49ers released Jones at 12:40 p.m. Sunday, and the club's release confirms it. Maiocco laid the two dates beside each other in a single post: the trade on the 25th, and on the 30th San Francisco releasing Jones while the Saints released White.

Jones played in the preseason finale, three days after arriving, and recorded two tackles and a pass defended. A call published under this byline on the day of the trade had him on the initial 53. The club went the other way.

Jalen Stroman played every defensive snap in Las Vegas and was waived#

Maiocco reported at 2:18 p.m. that the 49ers waived Stroman, and that the plan is to bring him back on the practice squad if he clears waivers. The club's release lists him among the nineteen waived. Stroman went undrafted this spring after five college seasons at Virginia Tech and Notre Dame.

Three days earlier he played all 66 of San Francisco's defensive snaps against the Raiders and 21 on special teams, which was more special-teams work than any other 49er took that night. Both figures are off the Playtime Percentage pages of the official game book. That was the last football he played before the deadline, and a call published under this byline on Friday had him on the roster.

The practice-squad plan is a plan, not an outcome. Another club can claim him when waivers are awarded at 10 a.m. Pacific on Monday, and San Francisco sits 27th of 32 in the claiming order. The safeties who did make the list are Ji'Ayir Brown, Malik Mustapha and Marques Sigle, three of them, with Ashtyn Davis released.

The reported list, and what the club added to it#

Quinton Bell was released first, at 11:26 a.m., reported by Schefter. Bell signed on July 29 and played 28 defensive snaps and 15 on special teams in Las Vegas, with one tackle, a count Jennifer Lee Chan published Sunday. He is 30 and has 33 games across three teams.

Jeremy Fowler reported at 12:47 p.m. that the 49ers were waiving Khalil Dinkins, the undrafted rookie tight end, with hopes of a practice-squad return. Dinkins had been waived once already this summer, on July 25, and re-signed on August 20 to a three-year deal.

Two more went at 1:55 p.m., receiver Will Pauling and tight end Hayden Rucci. NBC Sports Bay Area's live file quotes Maiocco reporting both, with Pauling likely to return to the practice squad; 49ers Webzone's roster tracker credits the Pauling report to Barrows instead. Two published versions of who had it first, and they do not reconcile. Rucci caught two passes for 25 yards in the finale. Pauling was an undrafted rookie out of Notre Dame.

At 2:02 p.m. the defense lost two. Maiocco reported the club waived defensive back Patrick McMorris; Matt Barrows of The Athletic reported it waived linebacker Jalen Graham. Both are practice-squad candidates. Graham was a seventh-round pick of the 49ers in 2023 and has played 15 games in three seasons. McMorris played six games for Miami in 2024, the year the Dolphins drafted him in the sixth round.

Adrian Martinez, reported cut on Saturday, appears in the club's Sunday list of waived players. That leaves Brock Purdy, Mac Jones and Kurtis Rourke as the quarterbacks. Rourke has three broken ribs, confirmed by Shanahan on August 25.

Then the twenty-seven the reporting did not have. Released: Eli Apple, Khalil Herbert, KhaDarel Hodge, Trenton Irwin, Ogbo Okoronkwo, Malik Turner, punter Corliss Waitman and long snapper Jon Weeks, along with Ashtyn Davis, Doug Kramer Jr. and Brandon Parker. Waived: Evan Anderson, Bryson Eason, Viliami Fehoko Jr., Wesley Grimes, Jah Joyner, Darrell Luter Jr., Sincere McCormick, Drake Nugent, Jakob Robinson, Sebastian Valdez and Larry Worth III.

Two of those names had barely landed. Fehoko signed a one-year deal on August 24 and lasted six days. Joyner signed one on August 27 and lasted three.

The specialists are a story of their own#

The club's initial roster lists one specialist, the kicker Eddy Piñeiro. It released its punter and its long snapper on the same afternoon.

49ers Webzone reads that as likely temporary, writing that Waitman and Weeks could have a handshake agreement to return once the club makes further moves, and San Francisco has used the mechanism before to open roster spots without exposing players it wants to keep. That is a reading of intent, not a transaction, and until one of them signs again the document says what it says.

What is still open#

Every name this beat carried through camp is now accounted for. Jacob Cowing, Nate Hobbs, Jordan Watkins, Kaelon Black, Gracen Halton, Nick Martin, Demarcus Robinson and James Thompson Jr. are all on the club's published list. Hodge, Okoronkwo and Davis are off it. Toth is on season-ending injured reserve. Kevin Givens, waived on August 5, is not on it and was not re-signed.

Maiocco wrote at 11:20 a.m. that he would be very surprised if Thompson, the undrafted defensive tackle from Illinois, did not make the 53. Thompson made it.

Waiver claims are awarded Monday at 10 a.m. Pacific. Practice squads follow, up to 17 men. San Francisco is a player under the limit on its own document, with a traded-for lineman not yet on it and no punter listed, which is three separate reasons this roster is not finished.