The 49ers Have Two Depth Charts And Only One Of Them Has A Left Guard

The San Francisco 49ers publish a depth chart. It has twenty-nine rows on it, one for every position on offense, defense and special teams, and twenty-eight of those rows carry a name in the first column. Trent Williams at left tackle. Jake Brendel at center. Corliss Waitman punting and holding, Jon Weeks snapping.

The twenty-ninth row is left guard. Its first column is empty. The second reads Carver Willis, and the two columns behind him are empty as well, so the chart has one man at the position and has him backing up nobody.

That was the state of the page on Friday morning, six days before San Francisco opens its season against the Rams at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. The page dates itself in a single line underneath: the unofficial depth chart was last updated on 08/27/26. That is eight days ago. On August 30, inside that window, San Francisco cut its roster to fifty-three and traded Houston a draft pick for the offensive lineman Jarrett Patterson.

A different document exists. It has a left guard on it.

The sheet that has a name#

It is one page, offense stacked over defense over special teams, with the coaching staff and a pronunciation guide printed down the right side. It stamps itself as of September 2, 2026. Kyle Posey of Niners Nation reproduced it in full.

Left guard on that sheet reads Connor Colby first and Carver Willis second.

The club does not post that sheet on 49ers.com. The media resource site its own pronunciation guide points to answers a request from outside with a refusal rather than a page, which is what a credentialed media site is supposed to do and is also the reason the sheet reaches the public secondhand or not at all.

So there are two documents about the same football team, six days from a game. The one anybody can open has no left guard on it. The one with a left guard on it is not published.

What the sheet is worth#

Kyle Madson of Niners Wire put the sheet's status plainly. "It's important to note that the unofficial depth chart is compiled by the communications staff," he wrote. "That's why it's considered unofficial. There's no consulting with the coaching staff and the 49ers are by no means bound to what the communications staff lists out."

Which makes the September 2 sheet a communications department's best reading of a competition, printed on club letterhead, binding nobody. That is not nothing. It is also not a lineup.

Madson, having reported the sheet, does not believe the part of it everybody noticed. "Colby got the first crack at the starting left guard job and never got back in the mix once Robert Jones and then rookie Carver Willis took over," he wrote, and named Willis and Jarrett Patterson as the men he expects to be competing. Posey, looking at the same row, wrote that Colby would have gone "from first string to third and back to the first team in a month's span."

Robert Jones is not among the seventy-two names on the chart the club is still serving. San Francisco signed him this offseason to compete for the left guard job, he hurt his calf, and it released him on August 30, the day it cut to fifty-three and traded for Patterson. The man who took the job off Colby is the reason the job is open.

Two readings of one page, and the page is the strongest piece of paper anybody outside the building has.

The coach has not moved#

Kyle Shanahan was asked on Monday, August 31, whether left guard was settled. He said he did not know yet. Asked whether he was keeping the answer from the Rams, he said he was not.

"It's the truth," Shanahan said, in comments David Bonilla of 49ers Webzone published that day. He gave the reason: the club normally gets three practices and then names a lineup at Monday's leadership council, and this year it had not had those practices and had just added Patterson to the group. On Patterson himself: "We love that he has some flex at center and guard. It's still fluid in all our positions."

Nothing has replaced that sentence. The club's own morning report on Friday, the day it opened its Australia hub, names no left guard at all.

The room shrank instead of clearing#

Seven of the seventy-two men still listed on the club's live chart appear on the September 2 sheet's injured reserve list. Three of the seven are offensive linemen, and all three sat directly behind the interior.

Austen Pleasants is second at right tackle on the chart the club is still serving. Brett Toth is third at center. Nick Zakelj is third at right guard, immediately under Colby, who is listed second there.

That is the mechanism behind Colby's move, and it is subtraction rather than promotion. He is on the live chart as a backup right guard and on the September 2 sheet as a starting left guard, and between those two documents the men stacked around him went to injured reserve.

Willis is the other half of it. He is the only name in the left guard row of the chart the club publishes, and he is second in that row on the sheet it does not.

Six days out, the position stands where it stands because the 49ers have shown their work to the people who cover them and not to the people who watch them. A reader who wants to know who plays left guard next Thursday can open the club's chart and find the same blank box that has been sitting there since August 27.

The Called Shot#

One, and it is scored by opening one page.

On September 10, 2026, the day of the Rams game, the depth chart at 49ers.com/team/depth-chart still carries a "Last Updated" stamp dated earlier than 09/02/26. Method, fixed in advance: read that page on September 10 and read the date printed in the line under the chart. A stamp of 09/02/26 or later grades this wrong. For it: the page has now sat unchanged through a cutdown, a trade, three of its own linemen turning up on an injured reserve list and the production of a newer chart, and the club opens on a Thursday from Australia. Against it: this is exactly the week a communications staff refreshes a public chart, and a Week 1 sheet already exists in the building, so the work of updating the page is copying. The call is that it does not get copied before kickoff. Priced at -130.

Revisit on September 10, 2026.

Sources: 49ers.com/team/depth-chart, read Friday, September 4, 2026 at 10:12 a.m. Pacific, for the twenty-nine rows, the empty left guard column, the seventy-two names and the 08/27/26 stamp. Kyle Posey, Niners Nation, September 3, 2026, for the reproduction of the September 2 sheet and the first-string-to-third quotation. Kyle Madson, Niners Wire, September 3, 2026, for the communications-staff explanation and his own read of the competition. David Bonilla, 49ers Webzone, August 31, 2026, for the Shanahan quotations, cross-checked against Kevin Topley, NBC Sports Bay Area, the same date, which carries them independently. Mike Masala, Niners Wire, and Kyle Posey, Niners Nation, both August 30, 2026, for the release of Robert Jones, the calf injury and the terms of the Patterson trade. 49ers.com morning report, September 4, 2026.