Before Sunday night, most 49ers fans had probably never heard of Raheem Mostart. That’s no longer the case on Monday, after the unknown running back played the role of game breaker in the 49ers’ third preseason game against the Vikings, gaining 130 yards on six total touches, while scoring two touchdowns, including this dazzling 87-yard catch-and-run on 3rd and 22.
See it again. @RMos_8Ball takes the screen pass 87-yards for the touchdown. #SFvsMIN pic.twitter.com/a017riOaE4
— San Francisco 49ers (@49ers) August 28, 2017
Already one of the better special teams contributors on the team’s 90-man roster, Mostert more than passed his first real test of the preseason on Sunday, and is now looking like a real possibility to secure the final RB spot on the 49ers’ opening day roster. This development is significant, as Mostert’s ascension could come at the expense of one of the three players previously assumed to be relative locks to make the team behind starter Carlos Hyde.
Mostert joined the 49ers in late November of last season, his seventh team since going undrafted in 2015. Mostert, who has one career carry to his name, entered training camp as a long shot to make the team, due in large part to improved depth at the running back position, including veteran Tim Hightower, and two explosive rookies in Joe Williams and Matt Breida.
Despite the odds, Mostert has turned heads in training camp thus far, showing ability both as the 49ers’ top returner (he’s averaged 26.9 yards on 21 kick returns in his career) and as a gunner on both punt and kick coverage units.
“It’s a big part of my game,” Mostert said. “I want to go out there and change the field position and showcase what I can do. I make tackles. I can return kicks and block. I want to go out there and give it my all.”
In fact, it was Mostert’s ability on special teams that earned him some reps at running back on Sunday, with Kyle Shanahan and his staff eager to see if Mostert could help the team in multiple ways.
“If you can play special teams for us and you do a good job on offense or defense, it gives you a very good chance,” 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan said. “He’s done a good job on special teams, so I wanted to give him a little more playing time, see what he could do on offense. And, from what I saw out there, he did a real good job.”
Put simply, it would’ve been hard for Mostert to do any better than he did on Sunday. In addition to his explosive scamper, Mostert forced two missed tackles on four carries, and gained 22 of his 26 rushing yards after contact. According to Pro Football Focus, Mostert was San Francisco’s most effective player on offense against the Vikings.
All this is to say that if Mostert entered Sunday as an intriguing prospect, he enters the final week before cuts as a coinflip to make the 53-man roster. But at whose expense?
Of the three running backs already mentioned, rookie fourth round pick Joe Williams would seems the most likely candidate to miss the cut. Williams entered training camp with more buzz than any rookie not named Solomon Thomas or Rueben Foster. Shanahan was so impressed with Williams’ game breaking ability at Utah, he pleaded with John Lynch to put him on the 49ers’ draft board, after the GM was initially put off by Williams quitting the Utah team midseason for personal reasons.
“I’m telling you right now: If we don’t get him, I’ll be sick,” Shanahan said before the second day of the NFL Draft. “I will be contemplating Joe Williams all night.”
But Williams got off to a slow start in training camp, with most reports saying that he lacked the burst he’d showed in college. Based on Shanahan’s comments, many expected Williams to get a significant number of carries in the preseason. Curiously, Williams has had less carries than both Breida and Mostert, and has played mostly in the late third and fourth quarters against players unlikely to make NFL rosters (he played just 12 snaps last night). It should be said that Williams hasn’t necessarily looked bad when he’s had the touches, he’s averaging 5.1 yards per carry, but one would think that a player who some believed would be a contributor right away, hasn’t been given more of a look in the preseason.
Conversely, undrafted running back Matt Breida was the talk of training camp early on, and looked very impressive in the 49ers’ first preseason game, finishing with the team’s fourth best overall grade via Pro Football Focus. Breida didn’t play in the second preseason game against Denver, and rushed for 29 yards on seven carries on Sunday. For what it’s worth, Breida did enter Sunday’s game behind both Williams and Mostert on the team’s unoffical depth chart.
Finally there’s veteran Tim Hightower, who has touched the ball just three times in the preseason, rushing for -1 yard and fumbling on his first carry. One could point to these facts as an indication of an uncertain future, but it seems more likely that Hightower, who was also an impressive performer early in camp, is probably being held out so the team can get a look at younger players.
Without knowing each player’s current standing in the minds of the coaching staff, it’s hard to know how to evaluate the number of snaps and performances we are seeing from the running backs in the preseason. What we do know, however, is that Mostert has done just about everything possible to show he can help this 49ers team in a variety of ways. Whether or not that will be enough to take a spot from the names above, will probably be dictated by what happens in the next three days. At the very least, he has made the position battle at running back a hell of a lot more interesting.