It’s no secret the San Francisco 49ers have major issues at edge rusher — a former Buffalo Bills standout might be the answer.
Both of their projected starters, Nick Bosa and Mykel Williams, are coming off torn ACLs suffered in the 2025 regular season.
Williams won’t be available for the 1st month — maybe longer — while he continues his recovery. Bosa appears on track to play in the season opener on Thursday against the Los Angeles Rams in Melbourne, Australia, but it’s unclear what form that will take or if he might be on a snap count.
The Athletic’s Matt Barrows believes that uncertainty could lead the 49ers to turn to a face from their not-so-distant past and bring back edge rusher Leonard Floyd, who played for the San Francisco 49ers in 2024.
Floyd had a career year in his lone season with the Bills in 2023, matching his career-high of 10.5 sacks with 9 TFL and 19.5 QB hits.
“The 49ers entered the offseason with a hole at defensive end and somehow that hole has grown wider,” Barrows wrote on September 8. “Nick Bosa, who’s coming back from his third ACL repair, missed most of training camp while 2025 first-round pick Mykel Williams will start the season on PUP. Meanwhile, third-round pick Romello Height has been in and out of the lineup with various nicks and bumps and has merely looked OK when he’s been on the field. All of which suggests that at some point the 49ers will look to add a free agent like Leonard Floyd or Joey Bosa or perhaps make a splashy trade at the Nov. 10 deadline.”
Leonard Floyd Could Have 1 Last Great Season Left
Floyd, 34, probably has 1 good-to-great season left in the tank.
The No. 9 overall pick in the 2016 NFL Draft by the Chicago Bears, Lloyd has averaged almost 8 sacks per season over his 1st decade in the NFL with the Bears, Los Angeles Rams, Bills, 49ers, and most recently the Atlanta Falcons in 2025.
Floyd, who has approximately $88 million in career earnings, won a Super Bowl with the Rams following the 2021 season. In 2025 with the Falcons, he had 3.5 sacks in 15 games, and his head coach in Atlanta, Raheem Morris, is now the defensive coordinator for the 49ers.
He’s also been incredibly durable. The 2 games he missed in 2025 were the 1st 2 regular-season games he’d missed since 2017.
Bills Spent Big at Edge Rusher in Offseason
The Bills dropped the bag on an edge rusher this offseason, signing former 1st-round pick Bradley Chubb to a 3-year, $43.5 million free-agent contract.
Chubb has a history of injury issues; the Bills now must pray they don’t flare up again in 2026. The torn ACL Chubb suffered in 2023 was actually the 2nd ACL tear of Chubb’s career. He also suffered a partial ACL tear in 2019 with the Denver Broncos that cost him all but 4 games that season.
In 2021, Chubb only played 7 games for the Broncos after ankle surgery.
Chubb really has been almost dominant over his last 2 full seasons — 11.0 sacks in 2023 and 8.5 sacks in 2025, sandwiched by missing all of the 2024 season with a torn ACL.
“Bradley Chubb had a $31.2M cap number for 2026. Miami will save $7.3M in cap space while taking on $23.8M in dead money by moving on from Chubb, who had 8.5 sacks last year,” The 33rd Team’s Ari Meirov wrote on his official X account.
Ex-Bills $88 Million Edge Rusher Predicted to Sign With 49ers