San Francisco 49ers edge rusher Sam Okuayinonu went down with an injury in the fourth quarter against the Houston Texans and is now considered day-to-day with an ankle injury. The team won’t have Bryce Huff for another week. Yetur Gross-Matos has been a rotational pass rusher. That leaves Mykel Williams, Robert Beal, and William Bradley-King, who is on the practice squad. Trevis Gipson is no longer on the 49ers roster
.A trade feels inevitable. The caliber of player might not be what 49ers fans want,
but the Niners can’t go another week without adding another body. They might have to. But if they elect to pull the trigger, ESPN’s Ben Solak wrote about four trades that need to happen. One of those is between the Niners and the New England Patriots:
49ers get: Edge rusher Keion White
Patriots get: 2026 sixth-round pickWhite has completely fallen out of favor in New England. He started last season real hot. In the first half of the year, he was 11th among all defensive linemen in pressure rate and 16th in pass rush win rate. He was especially nasty on the interior, ranking 11th in pass rush win rate when lined up as a defensive tackle. He cooled as the season went on, though — 34th in pressure rate and 25th in pass rush win rate in the back half of the season.
White was far from a perfect player. He freelanced a lot, which made him a liability in run defense. And for all of his pressures, he struggled to come to balance at the quarterback. His sack rate of 1.3% was bang on league average for defensive linemen in 2024. There was a reason for his incomplete play, though. White started his college career at Old Dominion as a tight end and played only two full seasons along the defensive line. Even with his warts, the 2023 second-round pick looked like an ascending player.
One man’s trash is another man’s treasure in this hypothetical 49ers-Patriots trade.
White has the size the 49ers covet along the defensive line. Robert Saleh and Kris Kocurek may also be intrigued by White’s versatility. In 2024, White was one of just four defensive linemen to play at least 15 percent of his snaps on the left and right edge, as well as the left and right interior.
He’s listed at 6’5″, 290 pounds. White missed Week 2 with an illness, Week 6 with an elbow injury he suffered from the week prior, but was a healthy scratch in Week 8. There is plenty of tape on White this season if the Niners are interested. He played 38, 19, 54, 30, and 25 snaps in each of the five games he was active.
White has three pressures on the season, and they all came in mop-up duty against the Carolina Panthers. One of those came when Andy Dalton basically ran into White.
A change of scenery would serve White well. The current Patriots staff wasn’t the one that drafted him. As Solak noted, White’s best work came in 2024 as an interior player. This season, he’s only played eight snaps inside.
He’s also still on a rookie contract, which doesn’t expire until the end of the 2026 season. So, San Francisco would get a much-needed big body along the defensive line for pennies who is under contract for another year and a half.
White is 30 pounds heavier than Trevis Gipson, who, as one would expect, has not been productive in his own right as a run defender or a pass rusher. White is an upgrade from Gipson (or whoever the team signs during the week to replace Gipson) and, for a late Day 3 pick, would allow Huff to stay fresh for passing downs.
