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Why the 49ers Cut Kyle Juszczyk and Re-Signed him in the Same Week

Keep in mind, Juszczyk is 33, he will turn 34 in April and he's declining. They probably couldn't trade him and his contract if they tried.
Grant Cohn|
Feb 6, 2025; New Orleans, LA, USA; Kyle Juszczyk and his wife Kristin Juszczyk on the red carpet before Super Bowl LIX NFL Honors at Saenger Theatre. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images
Feb 6, 2025; New Orleans, LA, USA; Kyle Juszczyk and his wife Kristin Juszczyk on the red carpet before Super Bowl LIX NFL Honors at Saenger Theatre. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images | Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

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San Francisco 49ers

From a football perspective, releasing Kyle Juszczyk and re-signing him four days later made no sense. But from a financial perspective, the move also made no sense.

So why did the 49ers do it?

A day before the 49ers released Juszczyk, they signed blocking tight end Luke Farrell to a three-year deal worth an average of almost $7 million annually. That's more money than Juszczyk gets paid, which means the 49ers will use more two-tight-end formations and phase out the fullback position going forward.

In addition, when the 49ers released Juszczyk on March 11, they took on a dead-cap penalty of $3.6 million. That's cap space the 49ers can't use this season. Then the 49ers re-signed him to a new deal that's only $600,000 cheaper than the old one. And to afford it, the 49ers had to trade 25-year-old running back Jordan Mason to the Vikings. That's quite a price to pay to save $600,000.

Keep in mind, Juszczyk is 33, he will turn 34 in April and he's declining. The 49ers probably couldn't trade him and his contract if they tried, so why did they do all of this?

You have to remember that Juszczyk and his wife are extremely close with Christian McCaffrey, George Kittle and their wives. They vacation together. And when Juszczyk got released, Kittle's wife posted and deleted a screenshot of a FaceTime call between the Kittles and the Juszczyks in which both couples looked stunned.

Then when Juszczyk re-signed with the 49ers, both Kittle's wife and McCaffrey's wife wrote celebratory posts on Instagram.

I don't know what happened behind the scenes, but it sure seems like two of the 49ers' most powerful players and their significant others called in a favor.

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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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