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49ers Draft UCF DT Kalia Davis in Round 6

Davis is one of their better picks.
Grant Cohn|
49ers Draft UCF DT Kalia Davis in Round 6
49ers Draft UCF DT Kalia Davis in Round 6

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San Francisco 49ers

The 49ers keep adding to the strongest position on their team.

First they took defensive end Drake Jackson in Round 2, and now they've taken defensive tackle Kalia Davis in Round 6.

Davis is an undersized defensive tackle who specializes in rushing the quarterback. And while he tore his ACL last season and recorded only four sacks in college, he has the athletic traits to become a quality interior pass rusher, and the 49ers have the defensive line coach (Kris Kocurek) to get the most out of his talent.

Davis played linebacker in high school and his freshman and sophomore years in college, then he moved to defensive end, and finally to defensive tackle. So he has the explosion and burst of a smaller player.

The 49ers need an interior pass rusher to replace Arden Key, who signed with the Jacksonville Jaguars this offseason. Key was one of the 49ers' top interior pass rushers last season along with Arik Armstead, and they don't have a clear replacement for him on the roster. Former first-round pick Javon Kinlaw is a candidate, but so far he looks like a two-down run stuffer, not a pass rusher. Perhaps the 49ers envision platooning Kinlaw and Davis once Davis recovers from his knee surgery and gets in better shape.

The 49ers have been at their best in this draft when they've taken defensive linemen -- probably because Kocurek has a big say on which defensive linemen the 49ers take. The rest of the picks have been questionable at best. 

Davis is one of their better picks.

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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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