SANTA CLARA — The 49ers are freaking out.

You don’t have to take my word for it. No, you merely need to look at their actions over the past week.

The Niners are panic-buying players from other teams, looking for quick fixes to problems that have been months — and in some cases years — in the making.

It’s a last-ditch effort to find safety amid a steady stream of volatility in key positions.

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On Wednesday, the Niners traded a late draft pick for Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver Skyy Moore. Friday, they bought running back Brian Robinson in a trade with the Washington Commanders.

The message couldn’t have been clearer: The Niners don’t trust rookie returner and receiver Junior Bergen with a roster spot, hence Moore’s acquisition, and they don’t trust running back Isaac Guerendo to actually play the position of running back, so they traded for Robinson.

This is the 49ers admitting at two positions that the team’s stars-and-scrubs model wasn’t going to work. Not with all these injuries and all this underwhelming play.

And while the correct time to have dealt with this problem was this past spring, the next best time to make these moves was today.

The Niners needed to upgrade this roster with some players with experience. You know, the exact kinds of players San Francisco unceremoniously jettisoned out of town this past offseason.

And let’s be blunt here: Neither Robinson nor Moore moves the needle for the 49ers. But they’re both better options than what the Niners had in hand.

So while these moves reflect poorly on the San Francisco coaching staff and front office, they should also be lauded. It’s better to admit mistakes and do something instead of standing pat and hoping a clearly bad situation magically works out in your favor.

But let’s not pretend that the Niners aren’t using future draft picks — as menial as 2026 and 2027 day-three picks might be — to patch up holes that shouldn’t have existed in the first place.

The 49ers had a high-level second running back last season — Jordan Mason. But instead of keeping him around at a market rate — he signed for $7.3 million guaranteed (with the potential for $12 million) over the next three years with the Vikings — the Niners decided to save a little cash and go with the talented, but untested Guerendo and rookie Jordan James as Christian McCaffrey’s backups.

James was promptly injured in training camp — no one can tell you if he’s a good or a bad player — and Guerendo, upon returning from his own injury (shoulder), has proceeded to put the ball on the ground again and again and again.

It doesn’t matter how fast you are if you aren’t holding the ball.

So the Niners went out and traded for a running back who is average in almost every way.

The good news is that Robinson is tough and will get whatever is blocked for him.

The bad news is that he’s not particularly swift, and he won’t get an ounce more of what’s blocked for him.

In Robinson’s 570 NFL carries, he has a total of 76 rushing yards over expectation (NFL Next Gen Stats). For reference, Christian McCaffrey had 349 yards above expectation in 2023 alone.

Robinson is neither good nor bad, neither an asset nor a liability.

In other words, he’s a safe pick-up for a team desperate for safety. (Plus, Washington is paying some of his salary, per NFL Network.)

But in retrospect, wouldn’t it have been easier to keep Mason?

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And would the 49ers have signed wide receiver DeMarcus Robinson this past offseason if they knew what they know now?

The veteran — arguably the only middle-class player San Francisco added this spring — will be suspended for the first three games of the season. That’s no surprise to anyone.

The surprise is that the Niners needed him so badly this close to the season opener. The team’s long list of injuries at wide receiver leaves a depth chart that is one man deep — Ricky Pearsall. Everyone else was a camp body that survived long enough to stay on the 90-man roster or Bergen. Who knew the American version of Squid Game would take place in the 49ers’ wide receiver room?

And in Bergen — a seventh-round flyer for new special teams coordinator Brant Boyer — the Niners are yet to see anything but perhaps a little wiggle as a punt returner. On a team desperate for wide receivers, they can’t reasonably play a wide receiver they just drafted.

Cue Moore, who has many of the same issues as Bergen but has been in the league longer. Can you still be an enigma if people have seen you play?

Regardless, he’s a safer bet than the rookie.

You see the trend here.

And don’t think it’s stopping anytime soon. The Niners need competency on the defensive line, offensive line, and defensive back. Oh, and receiver, too.

Anywhere where the Niners might be starting a rookie or two is fair game for adding an established pro.

They’re searching for them in trades, but will happily go through the dumpsters on cut day and bring someone in for their 53-man roster.

All of this should have been done in March. It would have been easier to do in March. It probably would have been cheaper to do in March.

But here we are, two weeks away from the first game of the season, and the Niners are just now discovering that building a 53-man roster that’s roughly a third rookies and second-year players might not be ready to win NFL games.

So buy, buy, buy, Niners. Maybe if you spend enough, you might pull yourself out of this mess you’ve created.