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PFF: 49ers RG Dominick Puni is NFL's 10th-Best Guard

Taking Dominick Puni in Round 3 was a stroke of genius.
Grant Cohn|
Sep 9, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers guard Dominick Puni (77) after defeating the New York Jets at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images
Sep 9, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers guard Dominick Puni (77) after defeating 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

The 49ers made one of the best draft picks of the Kyle Shanahan/John Lynch Era last year.

Taking Dominick Puni in Round 3 was a stroke of genius. Not only was he the best rookie offensive lineman in the NFL last season, he is now the 10th-best guard in the league according to Pro Football Focus.

"The third-round pick in 2024 hit the ground running in his rookie campaign, setting up what should be a highly productive career," writes PFF's Mason Cameron.

"Puni posted the fifth-highest PFF overall grade (80.5) among qualifying guards. He stands out as a road-grading interior run blocker, with his 18.5% positively graded play rate on runs ranking fifth out of 77 guards."

That means Pro Football Focus could have ranked Puni as high as fifth on their list but chose to rank him conservatively at 10th because he has played just one season so far in his career. To truly be considered a top-5 guard or player at any position, you have to be elite for more than one year. So I like their rankings.

Still, I wouldn't be surprised if Puni were a consensus top-five guard in a few months. He's good at everything. He just might surpass Trent Williams as the 49ers' best offensive lineman this year if Williams regresses with age. He'll turn 37 in July.

Puni is merely 25. He's one of the 49ers' young cornerstone players along with Deommodore Lenoir, Brock Purdy and maybe Mykel Williams. He should be on the 49ers for years to come.

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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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