After three injury-plagued NFL seasons and no regular-season appearances, the San Francisco 49ers decided to waive their former third-round draft pick, wide receiver Jalen Hurd. The team had a lot of belief in Hurd, the player. However, that doesn't mean a lot when the third-year wideout couldn't find his way onto the football field.
"We realized he wasn't going to come back this year," Shanahan told reporters when asked about the move. "We were giving it as much time as we could. We all felt very strongly that if he could come back, how much he could have helped us. But for the third year in a row, just with his [bad luck] with these injuries, how it was healing, we knew it wasn't going to be this year.
"Just going into a fourth year in a row of it would just be too much of a risk for our organization, so we had to move on."
Hurd landed on injured reserve as a rookie in 2019. He tore his ACL in 2020. The receiver was placed on injured reserve again on September 11.
The 49ers officially giving up on Hurd won't help the criticisms directed toward Shanahan and general manager John Lynch and their draft miscues.