Bring DeForest Buckner Home. The 49ers Will Never Get a Better Shot.
I still have the 99 jersey in the hall closet. For six years I couldn't wear it and couldn't throw it out. The Colts might have just handed me a reason to dig it out.
DeForest Buckner stood at his locker in Indianapolis on Sunday and said he's sick and tired of the same song and dance every year. Monday morning the Colts fired their general manager.
I've been refreshing my phone ever since like a man waiting on a lab result.
Because for the first time since March of 2020, a Buckner reunion isn't a fantasy I talk about after two beers. It's a real thing a real front office could do before November 10. And I need John Lynch to do it. Please. Pick up the phone, John.
The trade I never got over
It was the week the whole Bay shut down. Everybody was home, nobody knew what was going on, there were no games anywhere, and the one piece of football news we got that week was the Niners shipping our best defensive lineman to Indianapolis for the 13th pick. I remember standing in my kitchen reading it off my phone and saying out loud, to nobody, "for a pick?"
They didn't want to pay two big interior guys, so they paid Arik Armstead and let Buck walk out the door. Then they traded down a spot and took Javon Kinlaw at 14. You know how that went. Kinlaw's knees never let him become the guy, and Buckner went to Indy and made first team All Pro in his very first season there. Kyle said later that the trade sucked so bad. He was right. It still does.
I still have the 99 jersey. It's in the hall closet behind the winter coats, and for six years I haven't been able to wear it or throw it out.
People forget how good he was here. Seventh overall out of Oregon in 2016, the kid from Waianae with the giant smile. Twelve sacks in 2018. Twenty eight and a half in four seasons. Second team All Pro in 2019, the year he was the engine in the middle of the best defensive line I've ever watched in this town, and he got Patrick Mahomes for a sack and a half in Super Bowl LIV. We lost that game anyway and I'm not talking about the fourth quarter. I'll never talk about the fourth quarter.
Why this is finally real
Every Buckner reunion take for six years died the same way. The Colts loved him, they paid him, he was their captain, and they were never selling. Nothing about that was ever going to change.
Then Sunday happened. Indy led the Titans 13 to 0 at halftime, at home, against a team that was oh and five. They lost 26 to 20. Their own fans booed them off the field and chanted for the GM's job, and Buckner, who never pops off, said it straight: "They're upset. We lost to the Tennessee Titans, who were 0-5." Then the line about the song and dance. You don't say that about a team you think is turning the corner.
Monday morning Chris Ballard was gone, the GM since 2017. Ed Dodds is running personnel for the rest of the season. The coaching staff reports straight to ownership now. Daniel Jones just got paid and he's sitting on four touchdowns and six picks. They're 2 and 4.
Think about what that building looks like this week. An interim personnel boss, a GM search coming, and the most expensive defensive player on the roster turning 33 in March and playing out the final year of his deal. Whoever takes that GM job is going to want draft picks, not a veteran who might walk anyway. That's a seller. They might not say it out loud for another week or two, but that's a seller.
The money actually works now
This is the part that used to kill it every time. Buckner's two year extension from 2024 runs through this season and that's it. His cap number this year is $26.6 million and there's roughly $23 million in cash left on it.
We've got the most cap space in the league. A little over $41 million.
Read that again, because I had to. No restructure gymnastics, no cutting a vet to clear room, no spreadsheet sorcery. We can just take the contract. And there's nothing on the back end, no dead money in 2027, no long term bet on a 32 year old neck. If he loves being home, and he's lining up next to Bosa and Odighizuwa in a five and oh building, you talk extension in March. If not, he walks, and if somebody else pays him we might even get a comp pick back for our trouble.
A one year rental of a Pro Bowl defensive tackle with the cap room already sitting there. I don't know how a contender says no to that.
Look at our defensive line and tell me we don't need him
I'm going to say something nice first, because it's earned. Raheem Morris has done an unbelievable job. This defense is third in the league in EPA per play. Our pass rush win rate went from 29th to sixth, and we did it with Nick Bosa missing most of the season. Osa Odighizuwa has been everything we hoped when we got him from Dallas, seventh among all defensive tackles in pass rush win rate. Gracen Halton plays like he's been here five years. Sebastian Valdez went from undrafted to the rotation to a sack. Lynch called this group a bunch of little Chihuahuas that chase you and swarm you, and that's exactly what they look like on tape.
Now look at who's actually standing.
Alfred Collins tore his patellar tendon at practice in Australia and he's done for the year. C.J. West is on IR. Bosa pulled the calf before Week 3 and hasn't played since, and he's out again tonight. Romello Height broke his hand. Halton and Mykel Williams are both questionable for Washington. James Thompson Jr. just came back from a high ankle sprain. I wrote about this exact feeling a month ago and it hasn't gotten better, it's gotten longer.
Chihuahuas are great in October. I'm worried about December. I'm worried about a January game in the cold where the other team just runs it right at us for four quarters, and our rookies have hit the wall, and we need one grown man in the middle who doesn't get moved.
That's Buckner. He's six foot seven. Raheem's whole defense is built on length and five down linemen, and Buck's arms go on forever. He was always a run defender first and a pass rusher second, which is exactly the order we need, because last year this franchise finished with 20 sacks, fewest in football, and the worst run defense grade in the league. Put him next to Osa and somebody has to pick who to double. When Bosa finally comes back, somebody has to pick from three.
The neck, and the other stuff that scares me
I'm a homer. I've got a jersey in my closet. So let me at least say the scary part out loud.
Last season ended with surgery on a herniated disc in his neck. He played ten games, four sacks. He's 32. That's real, and if our training staff, who I have yelled about plenty on this site, tells Lynch the neck is a problem, then fine, I'll shut up.
But he's started every game for Indy this year. He's got four sacks through six games, already as many as all of last season, plus a fumble recovery on a team that's falling apart around him. Those aren't the numbers of a guy hanging on. Those are the numbers of a guy who's still really good and is stuck somewhere that isn't.
The other worry is Indy just saying no. They're 2 and 4, but they're still second in the AFC South, and Shane Steichen is coaching for his job. Ownership might decide trading the captain the same week they fired the GM looks like waving a white flag. I get it. That's why you call now, before the next loss makes the decision for them, and you make it easy.
What I'd give
Not a first. Never a first. It's a rental of a 32 year old with a surgically repaired neck and I'm not insane.
A third round pick feels like the honest number, maybe with a late round swap thrown in so a new GM can say he won the deal. If Indy holds out for a second? I'd probably do it, and yes, I know that's my heart doing the math. We don't get many seasons where we start five and oh with this many guys hurt. You don't save picks in a year like this. You spend them.
And there's something about it I can't let go of. We gave him away because we couldn't afford to pay two defensive tackles. Six years later we're the team with all the cap room and he's the guy on the team that can't figure out what it is. Bring him back for the stretch run. Let him finish what he started here in 2019.
Kickoff tonight is 5:15 at Levi's against Washington, no Bosa again. The season so far is on the schedule hub, who's left standing on the line is on the depth chart and the injury report, and if you want another trade fight, I already begged them to bring Jauan Jennings home too. Everything else lives on the 49ers hub.
The deadline is November 10. That's three weeks.
I'm going to go dig that jersey out of the closet. Just in case.
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