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49ers Sign OL Spencer Long

The 49ers still aren’t done making moves before training camp.
Grant Cohn|
49ers Sign OL Spencer Long
49ers Sign OL Spencer Long

The 49ers still aren’t done making moves before training camp.

On Saturday, they signed center/guard Spencer Long, according to his agent, JL Sports.

This singing is significant because Long is not an offensive tackle. Recently, 49ers backup offensive tackle Shon Coleman opted out of the 2020 season because of concerns about COVID-19. So by signing a center, the 49ers have told us Coleman probably wouldn’t have made the team anyway. He’s not even worth replacing. The 49ers still have two backup offensive tackles they like -- Justin Skule and Daniel Brunskill -- plus a third they drafted this year: Colton McKivitz.

So instead of replacing Coleman, the 49ers chose to replace Jake Brendel, a backup center/guard you probably didn’t even know was on their roster. They signed Brendel in February and he opted out of the 2020 season just like Coleman.

Jake, we hardly knew you.

Long, 29, has started 44 games in the NFL, so he has experience. Plus, Washington drafted him in 2014, the year Kyle Shanahan left and Sean McVay became its offensive coordinator. So Long should fit the 49ers offensive system.

But he probably won’t make the 49ers’ final roster. He’ll have to beat out backup center/guard Ben Garland, who started six games at center for the 49ers last season including the playoffs and played well.

Long seems like a mere replacement for Brendel, who seemed like a mere camp body. Someone who would practice with the team in August but not make the 53-man roster. Meaning don’t get to know Long just yet.

Instead, get to know Skule, Brunskill and McKivitz. Those backup tackles aren’t going anywhere for a while.

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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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