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The 49ers Re-Sign Jason Verrett

At this point, Verrett is nothing more than a training-camp body.
Grant Cohn|
The 49ers Re-Sign Jason Verrett
The 49ers Re-Sign Jason Verrett

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San Francisco 49ers

One more chance.

That's what the 49ers just gave veteran cornerback Jason Verrett. Today, they announced they signed him a one-year deal that's probably worth the veteran minimum. Verrett is coming off a torn ACL, he missed all but one game last season, and he'll turn 31 in June.

Consider this signing a Hail Mary.

If it works out and Verrett is healthy, he will be their best cornerback and one of the top corners in the league, as he was in 2020. That season, he was healthy, and he was the main reason the 49ers' defense ranked fifth in the NFL even though Nick Bosa tore his ACL Week 2.

Verrett is strong, he's aggressive, he's terrific in coverage and he intercepts passes -- he would be the total package if he could stay healthy. But he has played more than six games in a season only twice in his career.

At this point, Verrett is nothing more than a training-camp body. The 49ers shouldn't put any expectations on him, and I doubt they have. Their main cornerbacks are Charvarius Ward, Emmanuel Moseley and Ambry Thomas. The 49ers don't need Verrett to make the team.

But I'm sure they're rooting for him. Because a tandem of him and Ward would be elite, and the 49ers haven't had an elite cornerback tandem since 1994 when they had Deion Sanders and Eric Davis and they won the Super Bowl. Plus, Verrett has had such bad luck in his career. It's hard not to root for him.

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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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