{"id":418853,"date":"2026-07-31T02:02:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T02:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/418853\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T02:02:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T02:02:09","slug":"deebo-samuel-returning-to-san-francisco-49ers-on-1-year-deal-espn-sources-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/418853\/","title":{"rendered":"Deebo Samuel returning to San Francisco 49ers on 1-year deal, ESPN sources say"},"content":{"rendered":"

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Free agent wide receiver Deebo Samuel<\/a> is signing back with the San Francisco 49ers<\/a>, sources told NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport on Thursday.<\/p>\n

The one-year deal is worth up to $7 million, sources said.<\/p>\n

Samuel returns to a 49ers team that drafted him in the second round in 2019. He spent six seasons in San Francisco before playing last year with the Washington Commanders<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Receiver is a position of need for the 49ers, who are dealing with injuries to Ricky Pearsall<\/a> and Christian Kirk<\/a> early in training camp.<\/p>\n

Samuel caught a team-best 72 passes for 727 yards and five touchdowns for the Commanders in 2025, the second-highest reception total in his career.<\/p>\n

But he did not carry the ball as much as he had in the previous four years with the 49ers. Because two of Washington’s top three receivers — Terry McLaurin<\/a> and Noah Brown<\/a> — both missed substantial time, Samuel’s versatility could not be featured as much as desired. He finished with 17 carries – 25 fewer than he had the previous season and the lowest since he had only eight in seven games during his second year in the NFL (2020).<\/p>\n

Samuel also averaged 30.1 yards on 15 kickoff returns — and would have been used in that role more had they not needed him so much on offense because of a depleted receiving corps.<\/p>\n

Washington acquired Samuel for a fifth-round pick in a trade last offseason after he requested the move after six seasons with the 49ers.<\/p>\n

Samuel flourished in 2021, finishing with a career-high 1,770 yards from scrimmage and 14 touchdowns, earning his only first-team All-Pro selection as well as a spot on the Pro Bowl team. He has topped 1,000 yards from scrimmage once (in 2023) since that season.<\/p>\n

Samuel has caught 406 passes for 5,519 and 27 touchdowns for his career. He’s also rushed for 1,218 yards and another 21 scores.<\/p>\n

ESPN’s John Keim contributed to this report. <\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2026 ESPN Internet Ventures. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Free agent wide receiver Deebo Samuel is signing back with the San Francisco 49ers,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":418854,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[167481,750,100,752,95684,167480,101,296,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-418853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-167481","tag-espn","tag-news","tag-nfl","tag-nfl-free-agency","tag-samuel-deebo","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-49ers","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418853\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/418854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}