The 49ers' Biggest Concern Heading Into Next Season

The 49ers' biggest concern heading into next season is not the quarterback position.
Quarterback is what we all want to talk about. It's the sexy position. But Jimmy Garoppolo is a serviceable quarterback when healthy and the 49ers can win with him. And they almost certainly will draft a quarterback, too. So they should improve their quarterback room this offseason.
The 49ers' biggest concern isn't cornerback, either, even though almost all their corners will be free agents. The 49ers know they need corners, and they'll get get some. They're well aware of the situation in the secondary.
And they almost certainly will get a new center, too. Plus a guard. The 49ers understand they have weaknesses at these spots and surely will address them.
But there's one spot the 49ers don't know they need to address. One spot they're in denial about.
Right tackle.
Not only has head coach Kyle Shanahan said Mike McGlinchey will return as the starting right tackle next season, Shanahan said the 49ers will pick up McGlinchey's fifth-year option AND would draft him all over again with the ninth pick if given the chance.
Yikes.
McGlinchey arguably was the worst right tackle in the NFL last season. He weighed less than 290 pounds, so he got thrown around like a kid in the ocean. He couldn't stand up to NFL power, nor keep up with NFL speed. He was a hologram. An illusion.
And he's coming back next season, apparently. So whoever plays quarterback -- good luck.

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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