Picking the 49ers' biggest loss of the offseason isn't easy considering the team lost nine starting players.
Charvarius Ward could be a huge loss. He's an elite cornerback and the 49ers are replacing him with Renardo Green who has seven career starts and has not played well in OTAs this year.
Talanoa Hufanga also could be a huge loss. His replacement, Malik Mustapha, tore his ACL for the second time in the season finale and probably will start the season on the Physically Unable to Perform List.
And Dre Greenlaw could be the biggest loss of all if he's healthy. He looked extremely explosive in limited playing time last year.
But the 49ers' biggest loss according to CBS Sports is Deebo Samuel.
"Samuel, similarly, was a fixture in San Francisco," writes CBS Sports' Jared Dubin. "He was a huge part of the offense as a receiver, runner and gadget player, and the 49ers don't have anyone else who can do everything that he can do. He obviously wasn't the same player last year as he was at his peak and San Francisco still has plenty of skill-position options, but things are going to look a lot different without him in 2025."
I would argue that things looked a lot different last year even with Samuel because he was a shell of himself. That's why trading him was one of their best moves of the offseason.
But Samuel's rapid decline was a huge blow to the 49ers last year. He was a key member of their 2023 team that went to the Super Bowl -- he scored 12 touchdowns that season. But he faded during the playoffs and was absolutely awful during the Super Bowl. And he never bounced back.
In 2023, the 49ers had two players on offense that opposing teams couldn't prepare for -- Samuel and McCaffrey. And the fact that the 49ers had both of them at the same time was borderline unfair. Those two scored so many touchdowns.
Now, Samuel is gone and McCaffrey is a shell of himself. It will be interesting to see if Kyle Shanahan can figure out how to score touchdowns without them.
