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The 49ers Could Sign Amari Cooper this Offseason

I expect the 49ers will sign Cooper to a modest one-year deal when free agency starts next month.

Grant Cohn

Dec 22, 2024; Orchard Park, New York, USA; Buffalo Bills wide receiver Amari Cooper (18) turns up field after making a catch in the second quarter against the New England Patriots at Highmark Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Mark Konezny-Imagn Images
Dec 22, 2024; Orchard Park, New York, USA; Buffalo Bills wide receiver Amari Cooper (18) turns up field after making a catch in the second quarter against the New England Patriots at Highmark Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Mark Konezny-Imagn Images / Mark Konezny-Imagn Images
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The 49ers should be in the market for a wide receiver.

Deebo Samuel recently requested a trade and almost certainly will not play for the 49ers next season. Plus Brandon Aiyuk is recovering from a torn ACL and MCL and probably will miss the first half of the season if not more.

Which means the 49ers have Jauan Jennings, who's good but also will be a free agent in 2026. And the 49ers have Ricky Pearsall, their first-round pick last year who showed flashes of promise during his rookie season. Other than those two, the 49ers are pretty thin at this position.

Once Aiyuk returns, they should have a good trio, but it's unclear when exactly Aiyuk will return and how good he'll be after mangling his knee. It's possible he won't have the quickness and explosiveness that made him special.

That's why the 49ers should heavily consider signing a veteran wide receiver. They could draft a rookie, but they did that last year. This year, they need to focus on the trenches.

So why not sign veteran free agent wide receiver Amari Cooper? The 49ers nearly traded for him last season in a deal that included Aiyuk but Aiyuk refused to go to Cleveland so the deal fell through. But the 49ers clearly were interested in Cooper, and that's because he's a terrific fit as an X receiver in Kyle Shanahan's offense.

I expect the 49ers will sign Cooper to a modest one-year deal when free agency starts next month.

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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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