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Former 49ers Wide Receiver Retires After 10 Seasons

A respectable NFL career has come to an end.
Grant Cohn|
Sep 9, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Chris Conley (18) gestures after a catch by fullback Kyle Juszczyk (not shown) during the third quarter against the New York Jets at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images
Sep 9, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Chris Conley (18) gestures after a catch by fullback Kyle Juszczyk (not shown) during the third quarter against the New York Jets at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images | Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images

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San Francisco 49ers

A respectable NFL career has come to an end.

Former 49ers wide receiver Chris Conley has retired from the NFL according to his agent. Conley plans to return to the University of Georgia to enroll in the film school and become a filmmaker according to NFL.com's Ian Rapoport.

Conley originally was drafted by the Kansas City Chiefs in Round 3 of the 2015 NFL Draft. In four seasons with the Chiefs, he started 34 games and caught 104 passes for 1,238 yards and 6 touchdowns.

In 2017, Conley injured his Achilles and missed all but five games. From then on, he bounced around the league. He spent two seasons with the Jaguars, a season and a half with the Texans, half a season with the Titans and two seasons with the 49ers.

And during those two seasons with the 49ers, Conley caught just 9 passes for 145 yards and no touchdowns, although he did make a 17-yard catch in the Super Bowl. For the most part, he played special teams for the 49ers and he was good. But he probably felt he earned more opportunities on offense that instead were given to younger players such as Ronnie Bell.

Conley always made himself available to talk in the locker room and often had extremely intelligent and insightful things to say about his teammates and the game in general. It's clear he has a bright future beyond football and it's cool to see him go back to school to develop his creativity. I wish him nothing but success.

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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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