The impending trade of Jimmy Garoppolo is the first order of business for the 49ers this offseason, but beyond that, there are two potentially monumental extensions on the horizon.
Both players, drafted in 2019, are eligible for extensions, with Samuel’s perhaps more pressing. He has a far higher likelihood of injury, and his contract expires after next season, whereas the 49ers have a fifth-year option with Bosa because he was a first-round pick.
Either way, both players and their representation will be looking to get deals done this offseason, and general manager John Lynch said the 49ers have good lines of communication with them, and “have budgeted” for those extensions.
NBC Sports’ Matt Maiocco joined Tolbert, Krueger and Brooks on Monday and discussed how those extensions could take shape.
In Maiocco’s view, the timing could be similar to the George Kittle and Fred Warner situations, where there is participation in pre-training camp activities, and a deal gets done prior to the start of camp.
“I don’t know that either one of those guys will step on the field again unless they have a new contract heading into next season,” Maiocco said. “We’ll see what happens with those two guys but yeah, I’d say I’d say right before training camp would be kind of a key time to look and see what they end up doing with those two guys.”
There is of course the potential trickiness from Bosa’s side, that Maiocco mentioned. His brother, Joey, famously held out for a while as a rookie over offset language, and eventually earned a top-three defensive end deal. Nick’s will be historic, with Maiocco positing that it could be, “right around that $30 million a year” figure.
Deebo Samuel’s situation is trickier, because his standing in the wide receiver position isn’t as clear, because he plays so physically, and because he’s positionally flexible.
“The Samuel deal is really interesting because he’ll be up, probably around $20 million a year,” Maiocco said. “And I mean, his representation might say it’s got to be north of that and north of that by a good margin because no other wide receiver does what he does, and you know, he turns into a running back, too.
“So my guess with him, his representation will be like, hey, the way you play, the way he plays the way he throws his body around, the way he doesn’t run out of bounds, the the way he lowers his shoulder, hell, the way he runs through tackles, they need to make sure that this contract is a good one because he puts his body at such such peril on a down to down basis. So that’ll be interesting one to see. I know a couple of weeks ago John said you know, ‘We budgeted for that,’ but his representation will probably saying, ‘Well, did you budget enough?’”
There’s also the question of what happens with Davante Adams, who is set to be a free agent, but could be franchise tagged. If he’s not, he’ll almost certainly set a new standard for wide receivers, and Samuel’s deal might wait on that.
Currently, the highest-paid receiver in the league is DeAndre Hopkins, who is making $27.2 million per year over two years with Arizona, dwarfing Julio Jones, the next-highest paid receiver at $22 million per year in Tennessee.
Listen to the full interview below. You can listen to every KNBR interview on our podcast page at knbr.com/podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Catch Tolbert, Krueger & Brooks weekdays from 2 p.m. – 6 p.m. on KNBR 104.5 / 680 and streaming live on KNBR.com.