SANTA CLARA — Defensive tackle Evan Anderson, waived from the 49ers’ roster when they put a waiver claim on defensive tackle Jordan Jefferson, has returned to the team on the practice squad.
The 49ers also signed offensive lineman Kilian Zierer to the practice squad Friday and released defensive lineman William Bradley-King.
Anderson (6-foot-2, 326 pounds) played in 12 games for the 49ers last season as an undrafted rookie out of Florida Atlantic. He started once, had one forced fumble and one fumble recovery.
A practice squad player to begin the season last year, Anderson was eventually promoted to the 53-man roster.
Jefferson was the 49ers’ lone waiver claim on cutdown day.
“It felt like an opportunity to upgrade our group,” general manager John Lynch said. “He’s a guy we’ve liked back to his college days at LSU to add something to our group and we wanted to take a look at that.”
The 49ers have a glut of players at defensive tackle, a position that had a huge turnover with the departures of Javon Hargrave and Maliek Collins.
Tackles will be rotated, but the potential starters are Kalia Davis and Jordan Elliott. Three rookies figure in also — C.J. West, Alfred Collins and first-round pick Mykel Williams. Williams is expected to be a defensive end, potentially a starter opposite Nick Bosa if he has sufficiently recovered from a hyper extended knee. On passing downs, Williams is expected to slide inside to tackle.
Both Williams and West have missed significant time with knee issues that aren’t believed to be serious and will be looking to make up for lost time this week as the 49ers prepare to open the season Sept. 7 on the road against the Seattle Seahawks.
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“I’ve always argued that the interior D-Line is probably the second hardest position for a rookie to excel at just because of how fast everything happens in there and just the different body types and blocking combinations they get,” 49ers defensive coordinator Robert Saleh said Thursday.”So, they’ve got a lot of ground that they have to make up.”
The practice squad includes undrafted free agent Sebastian (Hulk) Valdez and Anderson. Two practice squad players can be promoted to the active roster for game day each week a maximum of three times before they must be kept on the 53-man roster.
Zierer (6-7, 312) is a 25-year-old native of Munich Germany and has spent time on the practice squad of the Houston Texans and got in some training camp time with Atlanta and Cleveland. Zierer appeared in 21 games with 16 starts in college at Auburn from 2020-23.
