Throughout the 2025 NFL season, SB Nation’s Doug Farrar will write about the game’s Secret Superstars — those players whose performances might slip under the radar for whatever reasons. In this installment, we look at the career-best day 49ers receiver Kendrick Bourne had against the Rams in Week 5, and how important it was after Bourne dropped nearly everything thrown to him a few days before against the Jaguars.
Who says you can’t go home again?
When assembling his roster for last Thursday’s game against the Los Angeles Rams, 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan probably needed some ibuprofen when thinking about the receivers he could put on the field. George Kittle, Jauan Jennings and Ricky Pearsall, his top three pass-catchers, were all out with various injuries, and Shanahan also didn’t have quarterback Brock Purdy due to a turf toe issue (which, as you’ve no doubt heard a thousand times, is far more painful than it sounds), and he would have to go with Mac Jones instead.
Not the best series of options when facing the Rams’ generally ravenous pass rush, and when trying to match haymakers with Sean McVay and Matthew Stafford, Shanahan had another issue. His most familiar reserve receiver, Kendrick Bourne, threw up all over himself in San Francisco’s 26-21 Week 4 loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars. Bourne caught one pass on four targets for 17 yards, and dropped the other three footballs that were thrown in his general direction.
Bourne, an undrafted free agent out of Eastern Washington who signed with the 49ers in 2017 — Shanahan’s first year as the head coach — and played for the team through 2020 before signing with the New England Patriots, signed a one-year, $1.765 million contract in 2025 to return to the Bay Area. He was upfront about his performance in that game, and his missed connections with Purdy.
“I wouldn’t call it rust,” Bourne said after the fact. “I think it’s just building a relationship. I’ve got to catch the ball, so that’s how I look at it from my end. I felt like I was in the wrong spots a little bit. I’ve just got to be in better spots for Brock, give him a better target. I kind of look at it from my standpoint, not from his. Next week, we’re just going to work through the week and try to keep building that relationship as we go.
“This would’ve been a good one to get. Going into this week, it’s a quick turnaround, so hopefully we can get this feeling out quick. I’m not going to dwell on it too much, but I’m going to watch the tape, learn from it and try to attack on Thursday, and try to get rid of this feeling.”
Maybe the short week helped. Maybe Mac Jones, who played with Bourne in New England from 2021-2023, would provide a spark.
Whatever the reason, Bourne eliminated most concerns after that Jaguars game with a bravura performance against the Rams in an unexpected 26-23 win. Bourne caught 10 of 11 targets for a career-high 142 yards. Per Next Gen Stats, seven of those catches for 104 yards came on in-breaking routes, which is obviously a major part of Shanahan’s passing game.
Bourne’s biggest play came with 12:45 left in the first quarter, when he took a three-yard in-cut from Jones and rolled 32 yards through the Rams’ defense. The play bore a interesting resemblance to a play in Bourne’s only other 10-catch game with the Patriots against the Las Vegas Raiders on October 15, 2023.
Perhaps Jones and Bourne were reliving old times.
”KB has been awesome for us,“ Shanahan said postgame. ”For us to just add him in, I think in Week 2 that we did… for him to just be a part of our group to end up having to start here basically these last two weeks. He had a couple big drops last week. Every time he did something, he completely made it up because the plays he made with his hands, the plays he made after the catch — he was great today.
“Mac’s a good quarterback and KB is a good receiver. I know we call it chemistry when they connect, but they like each other.”
“It was good,” Jones said of his old friend’s performance. “He came in on… I get my days messed up because we had a short week, but whatever our Wednesday was, and he was like, ‘Dang, I just have to get better and catch the ball.’ I’m like, ‘Dude, that happened last Sunday. Let’s move on and focus on this week.’ I was like, ‘You have to move on,’ and he did. That’s what KB [Kendrick Bourne] does.
“I feel like when you have the relationship we have… I knew that about him and he knows that about me. Sometimes we struggle to move on from bad plays, so he’s always got my back when it’s not going great and then I’m always happy to have his back.”
The 49ers lead the NFC West with a 4-1 record despite all their injuries, which is a clear testament to Shanahan and the rest of the coaching staff. On Thursday night, it was also a mark of Kendrick Bourne’s ability to move past previous mistakes.
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