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49ers Create $9.5 Million in Salary Cap Space by Restructuring Dee Ford's Contract

Well, bust my buttons.
Grant Cohn|
49ers Create $9.5 Million in Salary Cap Space by Restructuring Dee Ford's Contract
49ers Create $9.5 Million in Salary Cap Space by Restructuring Dee Ford's Contract

Well, bust my buttons.

The 49ers have just doubled their salary cap space. They restructured veteran defensive end Dee Ford’s contract by converting $9.5 million of his base salary into a signing bonus, according to ESPN’s Field Yates. 

Meaning the 49ers just created $9.5 million in cap space, and now have roughly $19 million they can spend in 2020.

Maybe the 49ers simply want to save this cap space for next year. Or maybe they want to spend it on free agent defensive end Jadeveon Clowney. I’m just saying.

On Thursday, 49ers general manager John Lynch spoke on KNBR in San Francisco and was asked if he’s interested in signing Clowney. Here’s what Lynch said: “We’re out of cash. That would be nice. I love adding great players, but Jed keeps looking at me and saying, ‘Man, I’ve been there for you, but come on.’ I say that in jest, but we’ve got a salary cap and we’re pressed up against it.”

Notice Lynch never denied interest in Clowney. In fact, Lynch said signing Clowney would be “nice,” and called him a “great player.” Lynch dodged the question by saying the 49ers were out of cash.

Now they have plenty of cash. Will York let Lynch spend it on Clowney? I’ll tell you one thing -- if Eddie DeBartolo Jr. still were the owner, the 49ers would sign Clowney, just as they signed Deion Sanders in 1994. They would go all in, and not waste their Super Bowl window.

Will York go all in?

This is a defining moment for him. Let’s see what he does.

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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