The 49ers Waived Junior Bergen Again, Cut the Punter Competition, and Kept the Left-Footed Veteran
Three names off the 90 on the eve of the preseason opener, Bergen, Bouwmeester and K.J. Henry, and three one-year deals in their place. Nobody got created space. Everybody got swapped.
One position battle in Santa Clara is officially over, and I want to be honest about how much I care: the 49ers have a punter, his name is Corliss Waitman, and the reason he has the job is that the other guy is gone. That's the whole competition. That's how punter competitions end. Somebody gets waived on a Tuesday in August and the survivor keeps his locker.
The 49ers waived punter Jack Bouwmeester, who had been in the building since 18 July, which isn't even a full month of employment. They waived wide receiver and return specialist Junior Bergen. And they put defensive lineman K.J. Henry on waived/injured after he came out of the joint work with Tennessee on Tuesday with something wrong. Three names off the ninety, the day before the preseason opener.
Start with Bergen, because that one actually stings a little. He was the final pick of the 2025 draft class, seventh round, 252nd overall out of Montana, and Shanahan said out loud at the time that the plan was to use him as a return specialist rather than a receiver. He got a four-year deal worth about $4.3 million, which in NFL money means the team owed him nothing and could walk away whenever it wanted. Then he got waived at final cuts a year ago, came back on the practice squad, signed a reserve/future contract on 20 January, and spent this entire offseason trying to prove he belonged.
And now he's waived again. Same kid, same result, twelve months apart. I've watched this franchise draft return men, love them in April, describe them as weapons in July and cut them in August for as long as I can remember, and I still don't understand why the return job here's treated like a rotating door instead of a roster spot. Somebody is going to claim him and he's going to take a kick back seventy yards against us in November. Write it down.
Bouwmeester never had a chance and everyone knew it. You don't sign a veteran punter and then hand the job to the guy you brought in three weeks ago unless he's dramatically better, and he wasn't, because Waitman is a real NFL punter with a real NFL body of work. He punted 65 times for Pittsburgh in 2024 at 46.4 a kick with a long of 71. He punted 62 times in 2025 at 45.5 with a long of 67. That's two full seasons of a team that hates giving up field position handing him the ball and living with the result.
He's also left-footed, and if you've never thought about why that matters, it matters. A left-footed punter puts the opposite spin on the ball, so the returner is reading a flight path he doesn't see ten times a year, and coverage units that practice against it every day get a small, free edge. It isn't a difference maker. It's a thumb on the scale. This team has spent the last two Augusts collecting thumbs on scales because the actual difference makers keep ending up in the training room.
Henry is the one nobody will write about and the one that tells you the most. He signed on 29 July. He lasted two weeks. He got hurt in a joint practice against the Titans and the team processed him as waived/injured before the ball was even kicked off on Thursday. That isn't cruelty, that's the business, waived/injured means he reverts to injured reserve if he clears, and the roster spot opens now instead of in September. But it's the fourth or fifth time this camp that a body we brought in to survive August didn't survive August.
Because here's the part that made me laugh out loud, and not the good kind. Those three spots didn't stay open for a single afternoon. The same day, the 49ers signed cornerback Eli Apple, who they had waived themselves on 2 August, so we cut him and re-signed him inside of two weeks, defensive lineman Xavier Thomas, and running back Zamir White, the former Raiders fourth-rounder who was in here for a tryout on Monday. All three on one-year deals. Three out, three in, ninety men, nothing gained.
White is the one with a purpose, and you already know why if you read what happened to the running back room on Monday. When your top four backs are hurt or being managed you go get somebody who has carried the ball in a real game, and White has. He isn't the answer. He's a body with 227 pounds on it who can take twelve carries on Thursday so that the guys we actually need in Melbourne don't have to.
That's what this roster is right now. A churn machine. Sign a guy, watch him get hurt, waive him, sign the next guy, and pray that the ones whose names are on the jerseys people bought are standing upright on 10 September. The schedule says the season starts in Australia in twenty-nine days. The depth chart says what we've. The season preview says what it's supposed to look like. And on Thursday night Kyle Shanahan is going to coach a preseason game at Levi's in which almost none of the players who matter will appear, which is exactly how it should be, and which will still not stop me from watching every snap of it. The rest of the coverage is on the 49ers hub.
We have a punter. It's Corliss Waitman. He kicks with his left foot. In the year we're supposed to be a Super Bowl team, that's the settled question. Everything else is a tryout.
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