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49ers Sign Special-Teams Ace Siran Neal to Two-Year Deal

Neal will turn 31 in August.
Grant Cohn|
Aug 9, 2024; Miami Gardens, Florida, USA; Miami Dolphins cornerback Siran Neal (33) celebrates after recovering a fumble against the Atlanta Falcons during the first quarter at Hard Rock Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Sam Navarro-Imagn Images
Aug 9, 2024; Miami Gardens, Florida, USA; Miami Dolphins cornerback Siran Neal (33) celebrates after recovering a fumble against the Atlanta Falcons during the first quarter at Hard Rock Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Sam Navarro-Imagn Images | Sam Navarro-Imagn Images

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San Francisco 49ers

At the Combine last month, 49ers general manager John Lynch said the 49ers want to become younger and more cost-efficient.

Turns out, they just want to be more cost-efficient.

They just signed 30-year-old special teams ace Siran Neal to a two-year deal. This move comes a few days after the 49ers signed 33-year-old fullback Kyle Juszczyk to a two-year deal.

Neal was selected by the Bills in the fifth round of the 2018 NFL Draft, and he played for them until 2024 when he signed with the Miami Dolphins. Now, he's on his third team.

To be fair, Neal is a quality special teams player and the 49ers need to get better in that phase of their team. Last year, they had one of the worst special teams in the league. That's why they fired special teams coordinator Brian Schneider and replaced him with former New York Jets special teams coordinator Brant Boyer.

Boyer has been working hard to make over his new unit. Last week, the 49ers released long-snapper Taybor Pepper, who's 30, and replaced him with Jon Weeks, who's 39. So the 49ers keep getting older.

It's good that the 49ers are taking special teams so seriously this offseason and using lots of their limited budget on it. But they still haven't made the one big move they need to make, which is to release kicker Jake Moody.

The 49ers can swap out the long-snapper and bring in some better tacklers, but as long as that head case keeps missing field goals, the 49ers special teams will stink and the entire locker room will be demoralized.

Get serious.

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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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