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Did the 49ers Improve this Offseason?

By the end of next season, they should be significantly better than they were at the end of last season.
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 made lots of moves this offseason, but did they actually improve?

They traded Deebo Samuel to the Washington Commanders, and that was addition by subtraction to use a terrible cliche. Deebo Samuel no longer deserved to start for the 49ers, and yet he demanded the ball and the 49ers gave it to him like he was still in his prime. That won't happen anymore. Now, players who deserve the ball will get it. This is good.

In addition, the 49ers added two quality backup quarterbacks in Mac Jones and rookie Kurtis Rourke, plus they added two good backup tight ends in Luke Farrell and Ross Dwelley.

The rest of the offense got worse.

They lost Aaron Banks, who's a solid starting left guard, and replaced him with a pupu platter of backups who will compete for the job. They also traded Jordan Mason to the Vikings and replaced him with rookie Jordan James who seems like a smaller, diet version of Jordan Mason.

On defense, the 49ers lost Charvarius Ward, Talanoa Hufanga and Dre Greenlaw -- three impact players when healthy. And the 49ers replaced all of them with rookies and journeymen. So on paper, the defense got worse.

But mostly, it got much younger. Plus it got Robert Saleh back, and he was the biggest addition of the offseason for the 49ers. Under his direction, this young unit could be quite good by the end of the season.

The 49ers clearly took a half step backward this offseason. But by the end of next season, they should be significantly better than they were at the end of last season.

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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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