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The Best Move the 49ers Made this Offseason

The 49ers didn't make many splashy moves this offseason.
Grant Cohn|
May 9, 2025; Santa Clara, CA, USA; San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan, right, confers with defensive coordinator Robert Saleh during the teamís rookie minicamp. Mandatory Credit: D. Ross Cameron-Imagn Images
May 9, 2025; Santa Clara, CA, USA; San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan, right, confers with defensive coordinator Robert Saleh during the teamís rookie minicamp. Mandatory Credit: D. Ross Cameron-Imagn Images | D. Ross Cameron-Imagn Images

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San Francisco 49ers

The 49ers didn't make many splashy moves this offseason.

Instead, they mostly let go of big-name players such as Deebo Samuel and Dre Greenlaw so they could give big money to Brock Purdy, George Kittle and Fred Warner. So, the core of the team is essentially intact, while the rest of it is mostly young and/or brand new.

The biggest signing the 49ers made this offseason was backup tight end Luke Farrell. They gave him a three-year deal. He never has caught a touchdown pass in his career.

The biggest trade the 49ers made was when they acquired defensive end Bryce Huff from the Eagles. He might make a positive impact for the 49ers, considering he had 10 sacks in 2023, but that was his only productive season, and he was a miserable failure for the Eagles, which is why they're paying more than half of his salary this year.

That's why the 49ers' best move of the offseason by far was hiring Robert Saleh as their defensive coordinator. Saleh is one of the best defensive coordinators in the NFL -- the 49ers should know, he was their defensive coordinator from 2017 to 2020.

Since then, Saleh has been the head coach of the New York Jets where he built another dominant defense. Unfortunately for Saleh, he couldn't find a good quarterback and the Jets are a terrible franchise, so he got fired.

Now, he's an even better coach than when he left the 49ers. He has grown, evolved and matured. He's like a professor, not an undergraduate.

So even if the 49ers start five rookies on defense, you figure they'll give up fewer points this year than they did last year simply because Saleh is way beyond former defensive coordinator Nick Sorensen, who isn't even a defensive coordinator anymore -- the Cowboys recently hired him to be their special teams coordinator.

What an upgrade for the 49ers.

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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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