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The 49ers Offensive Line Really is That Bad

You are smart enough to judge these offensive linemen yourself. Your eyes do not deceive you.
Grant Cohn|
The 49ers Offensive Line Really is That Bad
The 49ers Offensive Line Really is That Bad

There's a narrative coming from the 49ers organization and their sister media outlets that the Niners offensive line isn't that bad.

Here's the narrative, more or less:

Football fans are emotional and not smart enough to understand what they're looking at. So when they see Mike McGlinchey, Colton McKivitiz, Daniel Brunskill, Laken Tomlinson and Trent Williams get beaten repeatedly every week, they overreact like the overemotional fans they are.

Smart, sensible, objective observers understand the 49ers offensive line is much better than it seems, Mike McGlinchey is much better than he gets credit for and this entire unit should come back and stay together next season because it has potential.

If this narrative seems utterly ridiculous to you, that's because it is utterly ridiculous. 

You are smart enough to judge these offensive linemen yourself. Your eyes do not deceive you. The offensive line is the biggest problem the 49ers have. It's the reason Jimmy Garoppolo is injured, and the reason the offense is inconsistent.

Mike McGlinchey might be the worst starting right tackle in the NFL. He looks like a tight end. And he's supposed to be a starter. He's not some backup who's playing because the starter got hurt. The 49ers should bench him.

And the right guard, Colton McKivitz, might be even worse. He completely whiffed a block against the Rams that led to a fumble which the Rams recovered and returned for a touchdown.

McKivitz and McGlinchey might be the worst right side of an offensive line in the NFL. They're the McBusts.

But don't take my word for it. Judge for yourself:

Published
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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