Despite being on the same team as Brandon Aiyuk and often being looked to as more a physical presence than a traditional route runner, San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Jauan Jennings had a breakout year in 2024, posting career highs in receptions, touchdowns, games started, and receiving yards. Unfortunately, despite finally achieving regular playing time and proving his worth, Jennings missed out on a big payday due to a controversial ejection during the last week of the 2024 NFL season.
In an episode of the “Bussin’ With the Boys” podcast (hosted by former NFL players Will Compton and Taylor Lewan), star 49ers tight end Greg Kittle talked about Jennings’ ejection and how it not just hamstrung the team that day, but prevented the wide receiver from reaching a milestone that would’ve gotten him a ton of money.
Greg Kittle Recounts Jauan Jennings’ Controversial Ejection
Despite being Super Bowl contenders prior to last season, 2024 was pretty much a season to forget for the San Francisco 49ers. Going into Week 18 against division rivals Arizona Cardinals — the final game of the season — San Fran was 6-10 and had nothing to play for in terms of qualifying for the playoffs. Instead of just phoning it in and throwing out the backups, the 49ers developed a game plan specifically to get Jennings 1,000 receiving yards, to which he was agonizingly close. Reaching the milestone would’ve also resulted in Jennings receiving a bonus.
Unfortunately, in just the second quarter of the game, Jennings was ejected from the game.
“The fun thing about [the game against the Cardinals], the last game of the year, would’ve been Jauan Jennings going for 1,000 yards for the first time in his career. And he got ejected [when he was] like 30 yards away,” Jennings told the Bussin’ With the Boys podcast. “He was 25 yards away, and he got ejected in, like, the second quarter. And our whole game plan was to feed Jauan to break 1,000.”
The incident that Kittle is referring to was a scuffle Jennings had with Cardinals corner Sean Murphy-Bunting. Here’s a video of the incident.
—(@burnacity2025) January 5, 2025
On the play, Jennings went hard into a block on Murphy-Bunting, forcing the latter to the ground. All in all, the play was pretty clean until the aftermath, in which Murphy-Bunting got straight up and began grabbing at Jennings. Both players continued to jostle with one another until both were on the ground. No punches were thrown, but the refs gave both Jennings and Murphy-Bunting offsetting 15-yard personal fouls and ejected both of them.
In the effort to separate the two players, a referee pulled a hamstring, according to Kittle.
“The best part about this play was a ref was running over to break it up, and popped his hammy,” Kittle said. “He was right in front of me… and he just grabs his hammy and goes down.”
Yikes.
To be fair, it was the second straight play in which Jennings was involved in a post-play skirmish, having previously gotten into it with the Cardinals’ Starling Thomas, meaning that the refereeing crew was likely on high alert for things to begin escalating. However, upon further review of the play that got him ejected, the NFL ruled that Jennings hadn’t done anything worthy of an ejection and waived what would’ve been his second fine of the season. While this might’ve mitigated any future damages Jennings would’ve been liable for, it certainly must sting that he ended on 975 yards for the season, 25 short of what he needed to break 1,000.
It’s unknown exactly how much money Jennings stood to receive upon completing the milestone, but it was likely in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
