Sources: 49ers Reach Agreement With Saints to Acquire WR Star — Pending Physical
San Francisco, CA – 09/26/2025 — Three emphatic wins to start the season have energized the league, but they’ve also exposed a soft spot in the 49ers’ roster—particularly in San Francisco’s aerial attack. Today, real hope arrived from New Orleans: the 49ers have reached a framework agreement to acquire wide receiver Chris Olave from the Saints, with the deal pending completion following a medical examination.
With Brandon Aiyuk dealing with a minor knee issue and Deebo Samuel battling a hamstring injury, the 49ers have had to lean on stopgaps. Jauan Jennings and rookie Ricky Pearsall bring toughness and upside, but head coach Kyle Shanahan craves a reliable piece: a receiver who can beat press at the line, win contested balls, and sustain first-down chains on third-and-medium. Olave—renowned for his vertical burst and combat-catch skill set—fits that brief perfectly.
Under the projected structure, New Orleans would receive a conditional 2026 second-round pick (which can escalate to a first if Olave surpasses 1,000 receiving yards and plays 80% of snaps) plus a 2027 seventh-round pick; San Francisco would get Olave along with a 2027 eighth-round pick as a minor sweetener. To ease midseason cap pressure, the Saints will cover roughly 25% of Olave’s 2025 salary, with the exact percentage to be confirmed on the league’s trade call after the medical.
Tactically, the upgrade is immediate. In Shanahan’s staple 11-personnel looks, Olave can move all over—playing Z or slot flanker—to run go, corner, and whip routes, stress man coverage, speed up Brock Purdy’s reads, and lighten the load against edge rushers. In 21-personnel packages, pairing him with George Kittle’s red-zone dominance forces safeties into no-win decisions, opening rub and levels concepts to stack yards after the catch—addressing an early-season inconsistency for the 49ers.
Equally important: the deep third of the field—where Purdy’s play-action boot game thrives—regains its teeth. When Aiyuk and Samuel return, the 49ers can roll out 3×1 formations with Olave as the vertical stretcher, marrying choice and flood concepts to manipulate zone defenses horizontally while striking vertically—turning him into a burst-threat complement to Samuel’s YAC chaos and Aiyuk’s ball control.
For the Saints, extracting a conditional Day 2 asset signals a retool toward the 2026 draft, underpinned by the current receiver tandem of Olave’s understudy Rashid Shaheed and the versatile Cedrick Wilson. Retaining a portion of salary not only sweetens the package but also creates cap flexibility to tune the supporting cast around Derek Carr.
If he clears the medical, Olave could debut on a limited snap count this Sunday (targeting 45–60% usage), focusing on red-zone fades, third-down curls, and hitch routes off boot action to build timing with Purdy before expanding into full motion packages. Caveats remain: mastering Shanahan’s complex route system takes time, target distribution must be balanced to avoid crowding out Kittle and the running backs, and Olave’s hamstring history is the final hurdle in the medical.
But if all goes smoothly, the 49ers recapture both flexibility and explosiveness. A top-tier deep threat may not produce every YAC highlight, but consistent separation is often the difference between a reactive offense and one that imposes its will.
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