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Kyle Shanahan Explains Why the 49ers let Dre Greenlaw hit Free Agency

The 49ers botched this one.
Grant Cohn|
Apr 1, 2025; Palm Beach, FL, USA; San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan answers questions from the media during the NFL Annual League Meeting at The Breakers. Mandatory Credit: Jim Rassol-Imagn Images
Apr 1, 2025; Palm Beach, FL, USA; San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan answers questions from the media during the NFL Annual League Meeting at The Breakers. Mandatory Credit: Jim Rassol-Imagn Images | Jim Rassol-Imagn Images

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San Francisco 49ers

PALM BEACH -- The 49ers botched this one.

They offered Dre Greenlaw a deal below his market value, he rejected it, became a free agent and agreed to a three-year deal with the Broncos. At the last minute, Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch flew to Greenlaw's home in Texas to try to match the offer and change Greenlaw's mind, but he rejected them again.

On Tuesday, Shanahan was asked about Greenlaw's departure.

Q: Have you flown to visit a free agent to try to retain him as you did with Dre Greenlaw?

SHANAHAN: "No, that was our first."

Q: Why was he the first?

SHANAHAN: "It just worked out that way. When you're going through the recruiting part, when he's committed to someone else, we wanted to see Dre face to face and he happened to live in Texas. John and I wanted to fly down there and talk to him and give ourselves one last chance.

Q: But why not sign him before free agency begins? Why wait until he's agreed to a deal with another team?

SHANAHAN: "We tried to. There are negotiating tactics. Also, it's not just one player at a time. You're working 20 different things at a time. You're trying to get a backup tackle. You're trying to get a quarterback. You're working on linebackers, you're working on safeties, you're working on all these positions and they don't just go in order like that. You're negotiating with agents. These things happen. We still wanted another shot. We took another shot and we weren't able to get it done."

MY TAKE: It seems the 49ers' "negotiating tactics" are as follows: Insult player with first offer and try to repair the relationship after said player has one foot out the door. Or in Greenlaw's case, two feet out the door.

It's probably time to try a new negotiating tactic.

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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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