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The Biggest Lesson the 49ers Should Have Learned from Super Bowl LV

Kyle Shanahan should have had an epiphany when he was watching the Super Bowl Sunday night.
Grant Cohn|
The Biggest Lesson the 49ers Should Have Learned from Super Bowl LV
The Biggest Lesson the 49ers Should Have Learned from Super Bowl LV

Let's talk football.

Kyle Shanahan should have had an epiphany when he was watching the Super Bowl Sunday night. He should have realized even a great quarterback can't fix the 49ers' putrid pass protection.

Patrick Mahomes is the most physically skilled quarterback in the NFL right now, maybe ever. And he struggled in the Super Bowl because the Chiefs couldn't block for him. Couldn't protect him.

Lots of 49ers fans say offensive line play is terrible all around the league and so a mobile quarterback is required these days. But Mahomes is mobile. He ran a for 497 yards behind the line of scrimmage in the Super Bowl while he bought time and evaded pass rushers, and yet the Chiefs still scored only 9 points.

Russell Wilson is mobile, too -- even more so than Mahomes. And Wilson hasn't been back to the Super Bowl since he started making tons of money and the Seahawks had to skimp on their offensive line.

A quarterback cannot perform without pass protection. Not even Mahomes. So the 49ers can get rid of Jimmy Garoppolo if they want, but the next quarterback most likely will struggle and then get injured the way Garoppolo and Nick Mullens did last season.

Quarterback is not the 49ers' biggest need -- offensive line is. Today, the 49ers announced they re-signed Josh Rosen, who's more talented than any offensive lineman the 49ers currently have under contract (Trent Williams is a free agent).

The 49ers should let Garoppolo and Rosen compete in training camp for a starting job behind a retooled offensive line.

Give each quarterback a fair shot to win the job and stay healthy. 

Give them some freaking blockers.

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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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