San Francisco 49ers: Who Will Win the Cornerback Battle?

Although the San Francisco 49ers have lost a lot of players this offseason, most positions have natural replacements already in place.

Brandon Thomas is the favorite to take over from Mike Iupati at left guard. Michael Wilhoite and NaVorro Bowman are almost guaranteed to start the season at middle linebacker. Justin Smith and Ray McDonald will be replaced by rotations rather than any one player. The question isn’t who will play so much as how they will play.

The one exception to that is at cornerback. With last year’s starters, Chris Culliver and Perrish Cox, both gone, there’s a definite void at the top of the roster, and there aren’t two players who seem like locks to take the spots. Someone will win those jobs—no one runs a rotation at cornerback—but who that will be is very much unclear at this point.

Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated Press

Part of the reason it’s unclear is because the 49ers have yet to have their entire cornerback roster on the field at their OTAs. Tramaine Brock has yet to take the field in 11-on-11s in OTAs as he recovers from last year’s variety of injuries and a hamstring pull.

Jimmie Ward is still recovering from the foot injury he suffered midway through last season. You also have ongoing recoveries for Keith Reaser, Kenneth Acker and Chris Cook, meaning they’re perhaps not quite at full speed yet.

All those caveats aside, we can get some information based on whom the 49ers have been trotting out during their workouts, but even that’s contradictory.

On May 22, Shareece Wright and Dontae Johnson lined up with the first team, according to CSN Bay Area's Matt Maiocco. Keith Reaser served as the nickelback, as well as being on the second team with Marcus Cromartie.  So far, so good.

At the end of May, however, Shareece Wright sat out of team drills. You’d think that would leave Johnson in the starting lineup, with Reaser either joining him or continuing to serve as the nickelback. Instead, according to Maiocco, it was Cromartie and Cook lining up with the first team, Cromartie and Reaser on the second squad and Kenneth Acker and Mylan Hicks worked with the third team.

Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated Press

It’s clear the position is very much up in the air at this point, with the team juggling players around as they try to figure out who will be starting against the Minnesota Vikings in Week 1. Defensive backs coach Tim Lewis has been rotating all eight cornerbacks. According to the 49ers' website, that rotation will continue into training camp.

Oddly, a point is made of listing the “eight” cornerbacks who will be in the rotation: Brock, Cook, Wright, Cromartie, Hicks, Johnson, Reaser and Leon McFadden. This doesn’t include Jimmie Ward or Kenneth Acker. Nor does this piece on Dontae Johnson list Ward among the cornerbacks. Could that be a hint as to Ward or Acker’s roles on the team in 2015, or is it just an oversight by the writer?

Acker, as mentioned, has been getting work at cornerback, though no one’s reported him being above third team at the moment. It’s possible he was only serving as a warm body thanks to Wright and Brock sitting out of 11-on-11 and McFadden, Reaser and Johnson spending time working in the nickel. The 49ers' site also made a point of listing Ward with the safeties in an article posted on May 27 and only as a “defensive back” on their team roster.

That might be too much tea-leaf reading, however. The second-round pick spent on Jaquiski Tartt makes no sense if you assume Ward is moving back to safety. When he does finally join on-field practices, he’ll be working with the cornerbacks once again.

The exclusion when talking about the crop of cornerbacks is an oversight, or perhaps just attests to whom is ready to go at the moment—if you remove Brock and add in Acker, you have eight cornerbacks capable of taking part in 7-on-7 or 11-on-11 drills at present.

How is this going to shake up at the end?  With even the 49ers not knowing, it would be an act of sheer folly to try to guess who will end up atop the depth chart.

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One of the two starting cornerback positions essentially has to belong to Tramaine Brock. Brock was the revelation of the 2013 season, coming from barely making the roster to winning a starting role. He was penciled in as the starter last season before getting injured in the very first game and generally stumbling through an injury-plagued campaign. If he’s healthy—and that is a major if, considering how often he was banged up last year—he has to be first choice with a bullet.

The other position is wide open.  If you just go by contract value as a proxy for how much the 49ers value a player, the starting role should go to Shareece Wright, who will pick up close to $3 million this year, according to Over the Cap. However, Wright has never shown an ability to play at a high level in the NFL. In 2014, Pro Football Focus gave him a grade of -16.8. In 2013, it was -11.6. Those aren’t good numbers.

He did grade out positively in limited snaps as a dime cornerback in 2012, however. He wasn’t an amazing player, but behind Quentin Jammer, Antoine Cason and Marcus Gilchrist, he showed at least some sparks of potential as a cornerback.

Perhaps he was promoted to a level at which his talent was insufficient, or perhaps he had issues with San Diego’s scheme. The latter seems to be what San Francisco is banking on. Trent Baalke compared Wright to Carlos Rogers, reported by CSN Bay Area, pointing out that Rogers struggled before coming to San Francisco and that ultimately worked out well for the team.

Ben Margot/Associated Press

For the record, Rogers' PFF grades in the two seasons before he arrived in San Francisco were -1.8 and +2.8, so by one statistical method, Rogers was significantly better than Wright. If Wright gets the same boost from playing in San Francisco’s system as Rogers did, that would only put Wright somewhere around a -7.0 grade.

Wright’s going to have to take a larger step forward if he’s going to be a valued contributor in 2015. That's not saying he can’t take that step forward, and the right scheme can make all the difference in the world for a cornerback, but there’s a lot of projection and hope going on by those assuming Wright’s going to be a fine starter.

But if not Wright, then who?

The answer is probably not Jimmie Ward. Ward actually looked fairly solid as a slot corner—if you ignore the game in which he was destroyed by Brandon Marshall—but he doesn’t really have the coverage skills to be an outside cornerback. He’s a converted safety, remember, so he’s going to feel more comfortable on the inside rather than the boundaries. Ward is the favorite to regain the slot corner position, but it'd be highly surprising to see him on the outside at all this season.

Do keep an eye, however, on Dontae Johnson. Johnson was essentially forced into a major cornerback role far too early last season thanks to injuries all around him, and he played remarkably well.  He lined up in the slot and on the boundaries and even played some snaps at safety last year, so he’s comfortable moving all around the formation.

Bill Kostroun/Associated Press

Johnson could settle back in as the dime cornerback with everyone healthy. He could win the nickelback slot from Ward, as he played very well there in the middle part of the season. He could even wrest the starting spot from Wright—it’s telling that he hasn't been penciled in as the starter yet despite his status as a major free-agent signing.

One way or another, those four names fill out the top four cornerback slots. Going out on a limb, Brock and Johnson will be the starters with Ward as the nickel and Wright as the dime, but those last three are very fungible and could end up in almost any order.

That would leave one or two more slots on the roster, and it sounds like Reaser and Acker are pushing hard for those roles. Head coach Jim Tomsula, in a post-OTA press conference, said they were “moving along pretty good,” relayed by Niners Nation, and he specifically talked about a play on which Reaser jumped an inside route to make it.

Kevin Lynch of SFGate.com also pointed out that they looked so good in practice that Tomsula has actually cut their reps to give some of the other corners a chance. Maiocco went further to highlight a play on which Reaser worked across the field to grab a Blaine Gabbert pass. That’s a great sign for the 49ers, even if you have to take performances in shorts with no pads with a grain of salt.

Their main competition for a slot at the bottom of the roster is probably Cook, the other veteran on the roster. Veteran depth is important, and if four of your six cornerbacks are second-year players, which would be the case if Reaser, Acker, Ward and Johnson all made the team. That could potentially be a problem if injuries start to hit the 49ers again.

Cook looked decent enough in the very limited action he saw in 2014, but he’s probably more banking on his five years of experience earning him a roster spot rather than his play last year.

If the 49ers do keep six cornerbacks on the final roster, Cook’s veteran status does give him a slot, especially considering that both Reaser and Acker are eligible for the practice squad. Based on what little we’ve seen in OTAs so far, Reaser should be given the other spot. Reports almost always group Reaser and Acker together, but Reaser is the one getting singled out for highlights and was a higher pick in 2014. Neither is enough to make him a lock over Acker, but he has the slight edge at the moment.

We’ll see how long this status quo lasts, but those should be the six cornerbacks if the 49ers had to make a 53-man roster right now.

Bryan Knowles is a featured columnist for Bleacher Report, covering the San Francisco 49ers. Follow him @BryKno on twitter.