San Francisco's defensive line was already thin heading into Week 1 against the Rams, and it just got thinner. Nick Bosa is dealing with an ACL tear and knee tendinitis, third-round pick Romello Height is banged up with an ankle injury, and now Sam Okuayinonu has been downgraded to out with a foot injury. That left Keion White as basically the only healthy edge on the roster ahead of a trip to Australia for the opener.
So the 49ers went shopping on a division rival's practice squad and came away with Khalid Kareem, a 28-year-old defensive end who spent the last two seasons in Atlanta.
The 49ers are signing OLB Khalid Kareem off the Falcons’ practice squad. He’s on his way to Melbourne ahead of their opener against the Rams. He’s 28, former Bengals draft pick who spent the last two years with Atlanta.
The fit isn't random. Kareem played under Raheem Morris in Atlanta, and Morris is now San Francisco's defensive coordinator — a built-in reason to trust a guy with only 41 career tackles and 1 sack over 7 seasons to step into a Week 1 game plan on short notice. He's a 2020 fifth-round pick out of Notre Dame who bounced from the Bengals to the Colts to the Bears before landing with the Falcons, and he's now on his way to Melbourne to suit up against the Rams.
For Atlanta, losing a practice squad piece to a poach isn't unusual — it's an occupational hazard of not putting a guy on the 53. What made this one notable is how fast the Falcons had an answer ready.
Trice’s signing is in correspondence to EDGE Khalid Kareem being signed off the Falcons’ practice squad by another team, a team source said. So, Trice essentially takes Kareem’s spot on the Falcons’ P-squad.
According to Daniel Flick, Bralen Trice's return to Atlanta's practice squad is directly tied to Kareem's departure — Trice is filling the exact spot Kareem vacated. Other reporters framed it the same way: Aaron Wilson had the Falcons signing Trice while releasing Kareem, and PFT confirmed Trice was back on the practice squad within the hour.
Falcons sign LB Bralen Trice back to practice squad. t.co/HvPPNQOFcp
It's a small transaction in the grand scheme of a Week 1 roster shuffle, but it's a tidy example of how thin the margins are on the back end of NFL rosters — one team's injury crunch becomes another team's practice squad opening, and the whole thing gets sorted out in a matter of hours before a plane leaves for Australia.