The 49ers Ended Their Punter Competition Twenty-Five Days After It Started

The 49ers waived punter Jack Bouwmeester on Wednesday, which leaves Corliss Waitman as the only punter on the roster and closes the last open specialist job of camp. The competition lasted twenty-five days and ended the day before the first game either man could have punted in.

That last part is measured rather than assumed. The club's roster page carried 88 names on its active table Wednesday afternoon, and exactly one of them punts: Waitman, No. 7, listed with four years of experience. Tennessee plays at Levi's Stadium on Thursday at 6 p.m. PT.

The twenty-five days are only the part San Francisco spent watching him. Bouwmeester is a 27-year-old undrafted rookie from Bendigo, Australia, who punted three seasons at Utah and one at Texas, and he agreed to come here in the spring, straight out of the April draft. He did not officially sign until July 18 because his Australian work visa took that long to clear. The club held the arrangement open across the whole delay, put him under a three-year contract when it finally cleared, and released him twenty-five days later.

The punter was one of six moves the club announced at 1:21 p.m. Cornerback Eli Apple, defensive lineman Xavier Thomas and running back Zamir White each signed one-year deals. Receiver Junior Bergen was waived alongside Bouwmeester. Defensive lineman K.J. Henry was waived with an injury designation, fourteen days after he signed.

Nobody explained any of it, and nobody was scheduled to. Wednesday was a walk-through with no media availability, per the practice and media schedule the club published for the week. The last time a coach took questions was Tuesday, after the joint practice with Tennessee.

Nine days ago both specialist jobs were open through the preseason#

The last time anyone from the club addressed the punter competition on the record was August 3, and what he said was that it was not close to over. Special teams coordinator Brant Boyer, in the club's own Day 6 recap that afternoon, had both the punter job and the punt return job staying open through the preseason. On the return competition: "We're trying to find the guy that has the whole package that we can count on every week." The same recap named four men in that competition, all receivers: Jacob Cowing, Jordan Watkins, Junior Bergen and Will Pauling.

Nine days later the club ended the punter job without a preseason snap and waived one of the four returners. The return job is still open. It has three men in it now.

The backfield ran out#

White is the move with a stated reason behind it, and the reason is that the 49ers ran out of healthy running backs. Kevin Topley reported at NBC Sports Bay Area on August 10 that four backs did not practice that day: Christian McCaffrey with tightness, Jordan James with fractured ribs, rookie Kaelon Black with an adductor injury, and Isaac Guerendo with a torn pectoral on the Active/PUP list. The club worked out White and Nyheim Hines that same Monday. Two days later it signed White.

Neither James nor Black practiced at Tuesday's joint session either. That is two dated absences apiece in three days, which is the whole of what has been published about them this week.

White is 26 and spent four seasons with Las Vegas. David Bonilla at 49ers Webzone has his career line at 45 games, nine starts, 198 carries for 736 yards, two rushing touchdowns and 25 catches for 152 yards. Across those 198 attempts he averaged 3.7 yards a carry.

He is the second running back San Francisco has signed in ten days, after Khalil Herbert on August 2. Neither signing tells you anything about the two men actually competing for the backup job, because the club has now answered that question twice by adding somebody who is not in it.

The other two, and the one who leaves differently#

Apple is 31, listed at 6-1 and 203 out of Ohio State, with ten years of accrued experience on the club's roster page. Thomas is 26, 6-2 and 250 out of Clemson, with two. Thomas joins a defensive line that lost Henry in the same release.

None of the three had a jersey number listed on the club's roster page as of Wednesday afternoon. That is ordinary for a signing this recent, and it is worth knowing before kickoff if the plan was to watch what the 49ers just bought.

Henry did not leave the way Bergen did, and the distinction is the point of the designation. Waived with an injury designation carries an injury settlement or a path onto injured reserve behind it, so the club is not necessarily finished with him. Henry signed on July 29, in the same release that brought Quinton Bell.

Six spots changed and the projection did not move#

Bergen, Bouwmeester and Henry were all outside the projected 53 before Wednesday. Apple, Thomas and White all enter outside it. The 53-man tracker still reads 52 against a roster of 53, and the missing man is still an offensive lineman, where nine are projected against a keep of ten. Wednesday was the seventh day of that hole.

Waitman is the exception, and he moved without doing anything. He goes from 5 to 8 on that board, because being the only punter on a 90-man roster is a stronger place to stand than being one of two. The only thing that moves him back is another punter, and a club that built this competition on July 18 and ended it on August 12 has shown how quickly it will do that.

Twenty-nine days from Wednesday, San Francisco opens the regular season against the Rams at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Bouwmeester is from Bendigo, in Victoria, the state that ground sits in. The roster flying to Australia has one punter on it and he went to South Alabama. Nothing the club has said links those two facts, because on the day it made them line up, the club did not say anything.

The club settled it without saying so, on the one afternoon this week when nobody was scheduled to ask. Thursday was supposed to be the evidence.

Sources: 49ers.com transaction release and transaction log, August 12; the club's official roster page, read in a browser August 12; the club's Day 6 camp recap, 49ers.com, August 3, for Boyer's words and the four men named in the return competition; the club's published 2026 schedule for the September 10 opener at the Melbourne Cricket Ground; Pro Football Rumors, August 12 and July 2026; NBC Sports Bay Area, July 2026, for the terms of Bouwmeester's signing; David Bonilla, 49ers Webzone, August 12 and August 9; Kevin Topley, NBC Sports Bay Area, August 10. Nobody from this site was at any 49ers practice.