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The 49ers Sign Washington Defensive Tackle Sebastian Valdez as a UDFA

This guy has a legitimate chance to make the 53-man roster one day.
Grant Cohn|
Sep 21, 2024; Seattle, Washington, USA; Detail view of a Washington Huskies helmet before a game against the Northwestern Wildcats at Alaska Airlines Field at Husky Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Joe Nicholson-Imagn Images
Sep 21, 2024; Seattle, Washington, USA; Detail view of a Washington Huskies helmet before a game against the Northwestern Wildcats at Alaska Airlines Field at Husky Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Joe Nicholson-Imagn Images | Joe Nicholson-Imagn Images

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San Francisco 49ers

This guy has a legitimate chance to make the 53-man roster one day.

The 49ers have signed Washington defensive tackle Sebastian Valdez as an undrafted free agent according to reports. Valdez is the third defensive tackle the 49ers have added to their team this week. The other two are Alfred Collins (Round 2) and C.J. West (Round 4).

Collins and West each weigh more than 320 pounds while Valdez is much smaller -- just 301 pounds. And yet, he plays much bigger than his size. Like Collins and West, Valdez is a run-stuffing specialist who anchors quite well against double-team blocks, which means he's a great fit for the 49ers' Wide 9 defensive front.

Valdez is extremely athletic and powerful for his size -- he ran a 5.02 40 and a 4.46 20-yard shuttle plus he put up 34 reps on the bench at his Pro Day.

So why did he go undrafted?

That's because Valdez has 31 1/4-inch arms. There are very few NFL offensive linemen with arms that short.

So while Valdez can take on double teams and hold his ground, he'll struggle to disengage from blocks and make tackles. Essentially, he's a human boulder on the football field. That's why he went undrafted.

Still, it's nice to have a human boulder as a backup if the starting run stuffers get injured. The 49ers clearly want to have a dominant run defense and Valdez will give them depth. Look for them to stash him on their practice squad.

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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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