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49ers Re-Sign Jeff Wilson Jr. to One-Year Deal

The 49ers just made their first good personnel move of the offseason.
Grant Cohn|
49ers Re-Sign Jeff Wilson Jr. to One-Year Deal
49ers Re-Sign Jeff Wilson Jr. to One-Year Deal

The 49ers just made their first good personnel move of the offseason.

They announced they re-signed running back Jeff Wilson Jr. to a one-year deal through 2021. Wilson Jr. was a restricted free agent.

I like this signing for a couple reasons:

1. I assume it's a bargain. Teams never should spend big money on running backs, but Wilson isn't a big-money running back. He's a steal. And he earned a raise.

2. I assume this signing means the 49ers will not re-sign Tevin Coleman or Jerick McKinnon, which would be phenomenal news, because they're terrible. McKinnon already said he's not coming back. Hooray!

Wilson Jr. always was better than those two, but started getting playing time over them only during the second half of the 2020 season. Wilson Jr. finished 2020 with 126 carries for 600 yards and 7 rushing touchdowns, plus 13 catches for 133 yards and 3 touchdowns. He actually led the team with 10 touchdowns. Impressive.

And now the 49ers have a terrific trio of former undrafted free agent running backs -- Wilson Jr., Raheem Mostert and JaMycal Hasty. And they all complement each other.

Wilson Jr. is the tough runner between the tackles who also runs good routes, catches passes and blocks. He can be a starter. Mostert is the fastest runner in the NFL who also catches passes -- he can be a starter. And Hasty is a prototypical third-down scat back, although he's a powerful little fella.

Sign a few more undrafted rookies, and the 49ers will be set at running back.

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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