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Ji’Ayir Brown has a Knee Sprain

The 49ers traded up in Round 3 to draft Brown this year because they saw him as a future starter.
Grant Cohn|
Ji’Ayir Brown has a Knee Sprain
Ji’Ayir Brown has a Knee Sprain

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San Francisco 49ers

The 49ers just lost another safety.

Rookie Ji'Ayir Brown sprained his knee against the Ravens and the 49ers are concerned that his injury could be serious, head coach Kyle Shanahan said on Wednesday. The 49ers haven't yet ruled him out for Sunday's game against the Washington Commanders, but it seems unlikely he'll play any time soon.

Brown started the last five games in place of Talanoa Hufanga, who tore his ACL Week 11 against the Buccaneers. And Brown was every bit as good as Hufanga, if not better. Replacing Brown will be much more difficult.

The 49ers traded up in Round 3 to draft Brown this year because they saw him as a future starter. They don't have any more young, future starters at safety on their roster. They have young safeties on their practice squad, and they have veteran backups who won't perform nearly as well as Brown or Hufanga.

The most likely option to start at strong safety the rest of the season is Logan Ryan, who the 49ers signed a few weeks ago while he was on a Thanksgiving cruise with his family. Ryan started 36 games at safety from 2020 to 2022 and was serviceable. He began his career as a cornerback, but he's not fast enough to play that position anymore.

The 49ers also could try nickelback Isaiah Oliver at safety, considering he seems too slow even to play nickelback these days. However, he might not be strong enough to play safety.

Whatever the 49ers decide to do, their options are less than ideal.

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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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