Deebo Samuel Notes: Draft Compensation, Jonathan Allen, Broncos, Texans

The 49ers made good on their promise to honor WR Deebo Samuel’s trade request, shipping him to the Commanders in exchange for a fifth-round pick. Given Samuel’s disappointing 2024 season, San Francisco knew it would be selling low on the 2021 First Team All-Pro, and a Day 3 selection was seen as the likely return. That said, The Athletic’s Dianna Russini says Niners GM John Lynch was seeking a fourth-rounder before agreeing to take back the fifth from former subordinate and current Washington GM Adam Peters.

Albert Breer of SI.com says that selection will be a 2025 pick (No. 148 overall), which means Washington’s first pick on the third day of April’s draft will not be until the sixth round (the team dealt a third- and fourth-rounder to the Saints as part of the November trade that brought CB Marshon Lattimore into the fold, and the pick going to San Francisco is the same one Washington acquired in the Lattimore trade). As such, Breer believes the club could seek trade-down opportunities to backfill the holes that the Lattimore and Samuel deals created.

In light of Lattimore’s recent injury woes and Samuel’s inability to recapture his 2021 form, those acquisitions come with some risk. However, the potential reward is also quite high. When looking at the net impact on the Commanders’ cache of draft picks, the high-profile transactions allowed Washington to address areas of obvious need with Pro Bowl-caliber players in exchange for a 2025 third-rounder, fourth-rounder, and sixth-rounder (h/t ESPN’s Field Yates). The Niners, meanwhile, now have 11 selections in April’s draft (h/t/ Eric Branch of the San Francisco Chronicle), which could be critical for a club that may put a high-end QB contract on its books in the near future.

One of the ways Peters could acquire additional draft capital is by dealing longtime DT Jonathan Allen, who has been given permission to seek a trade. Per ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler, Allen’s name did come up when the Commanders and 49ers were discussing Samuel, but the 30-year-old defender remains on Washington’s roster for the time being. Although Allen could have been a replacement for presumptive cap casualty Javon Hargrave, Allen’s salary – he is due $15.5MM in base pay in 2025 – was perhaps an insurmountable hurdle.

Regardless of whether they retain or jettison Allen, the cap-flush Commanders have the financial wherewithal to take a risk on a player with Samuel’s upside (as noted previously, the team is absorbing the entirety of Samuel’s $17.55MM salary for 2025, the last year of his current deal). As we also discussed earlier this month, the South Carolina product is technically due a $15.4MM option bonus on March 22, and Washington could utilize the option to spread out the $17.55MM cap charge and incur just $5.21MM against the cap this year. However, that would push additional money into void years, and since the Commanders are expected to have over $80MM in cap room, Jason Fitzgerald of OverTheCap.com believes the team will simply take on the entire $17.55MM hit in 2025. Of course, Samuel and his new team could explore an extension, a possibility that Fitzgerald and others have acknowledged.

The Texans joined the Commanders as teams that had serious interest in Samuel, and the dynamic “wide back” would have been interested in joining Houston, per Russini (subscription required). He also would have been intrigued by the possibility of landing with the Broncos. There have been conflicting reports about whether Denver was actually interested in Samuel, but Russini indicates that neither the Broncos nor the Texans actually made an offer.