When former 49ers general manager Trent Baalke used a fourth-round pick on wide receiver DeAndre Smelter in 2015, he knew he wasn’t going to see immediate returns.
Smelter, from Georgia Tech, had suffered a torn knee ligament in college, but Baalke believed he was worth selecting and setting aside for the future.
At Georgia Tech, Smelter, a 6-foot-2 multipurpose athlete who’d gone to the school on a baseball scholarship, didn’t have eye-popping stats because he was in a run-oriented offensive scheme, but he was a tall, tough receiver who could make big plays and also make big blocks downfield. Plus, there were his large hands, the biggest among all wideouts in the 2015 draft.
“He’s got huge hands,” Baalke told reporters at the time. “Size-11 hands.” For perspective, the average hand size of American men is 7½.
Now Baalke is gone, but Smelter remains on the 49ers roster, as the team prepares to open its three-day mandatory minicamp Tuesday. Yet Smelter’s place on the roster is far from secure. After going through rehabilitation and missing all of 2015, Smelter appeared in just two games in 2016 and caught one pass for 23 yards in the final game of the season in a loss to the Seahawks.
With a new general manager and head coach in place, Smelter is going to have to produce well in the minicamp and summer training camp starting next month to stay with San Francisco. The team has added several wide receivers, and Smelter faces long odds to be with the team on opening day.
But as Matt Barrows of the Saramento Bee noted recently, Smelter would give the Niners their biggest pass-catching target, and he still has the same potential he had on draft day in 2015.
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In just 21 games over two seasons at Georgia Tech before his knee injury, Smelter had 56 catches for 1,060 yards and 11 touchdowns, averaging 18.9 yards per reception.
Wrote Barrows: “(Smelter) has yet to turn his promising physical gifts into production. (Though I thought it was interesting the 49ers parted ways with a number of receivers, but not Smelter. They must be curious about him).”
Patrick Holloway, who writes about the 49ers for SB Nation, also believes Smelter will be given a chance to prove himself now that he’s completely fit. But, he’s going to have to show he’s more than just a big-bodied, tough wideout like former 49er Anquan Boldin, to whom he’s often been compared.
“Smelter needs to work on his speed,” wrote Holloway. “If he can get some sort of separation and then invoke his physical skill set, he very well could be a younger version of Anquan Boldin.” Holloway also believes he could turn into a red-zone threat, with his size and hands.
“If he can get his speed up, he could be a legit No. 2 wide receiver for the team,” wrote Holloway. “But all of these are ifs.”
Smelter can begin erasing those "ifs" in the minicamp that opens Tuesday.
