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49ers Reportedly "Would Love to Get" J.C. Jackson

Jackson is exactly the kind of cornerback the 49ers haven't had since Deion Sanders and Eric Davis -- the last time San Francisco won a Super Bowl.
Grant Cohn|
49ers Reportedly "Would Love to Get" J.C. Jackson
49ers Reportedly "Would Love to Get" J.C. Jackson

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San Francisco 49ers

This almost seems too good to be true.

The 49ers reportedly are seriously in the market for a premium cornerback for the first time since the mid 1990s. According to Jordan Schultz, the 49ers "would love to get" free agent cornerback J.C. Jackson.

Jackson is exactly the kind of cornerback the 49ers haven't had since Deion Sanders and Eric Davis -- the last time San Francisco won a Super Bowl. Jackson has a terrific blend of recovery speed and ball skills, which are the two most important, most expensive traits a cornerback can have.

Usually, the 49ers acquire cornerbacks whose strengths are wingspan and tackling, traits that are a dime a dozen. They often draft college safeties and move them to cornerback (see: Dontae Johnson and Tarvarius Moore). That's a big reason why the 49ers defense is tied for the fewest interceptions in the NFL since 2017.

Meanwhile, Jackson is an interception machine. In four career seasons, he has intercepted a whopping 25 passes. And he's merely 26-years old. If he got to play behind the 49ers' fabulous front seven, his production might even improve.

But Jackson will be expensive. The 49ers probably would have to give him a five-year, $100 million contract, and they haven't spent that much on a cornerback since 2007 when they gave Nate Clements an eight-year, $80 million contract, which was a disaster for the 49ers, because Clements was not a shutdown cornerback. Ever since that error 15 years ago, the 49ers have seemed scared to invest heavily in cornerbacks.

And that's why I'm skeptical the 49ers actually will sign Jackson. They absolutely should, but history shows they probably won't.

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Grant Cohn
GRANT COHN

Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn's channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers' official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.

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