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PFF Names the 49ers' Three Best Players Entering the 2025 Season

A couple years ago, it was almost impossible to decide who the three best players were on the 49ers. They had so many great ones.
Grant Cohn|
Nov 19, 2023; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers linebacker Fred Warner (left) talks with defensive end Nick Bosa (right) during the fourth quarter against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images
Nov 19, 2023; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers linebacker Fred Warner (left) talks with defensive end Nick Bosa (right) during the fourth quarter against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images | Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images

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San Francisco 49ers

A couple years ago, it was almost impossible to decide who the three best players were on the 49ers. They had so many great ones.

Now, due to free agency, trades, injuries and age, it's pretty easy to name the 49ers' three best players. According to Pro Football Focus, they are Nick Bosa, Fred Warner and George Kittle.

"Bosa has earned a defensive grade above 84.0 in each of the past six seasons, with three straight elite seasons above 90.0," writes PFF's Trevor Sikkema. "Warner posted an 88.4 coverage grade, nearly matching his 91.1 career high from 2020. Kittle earns the nod over McCaffrey with a 2024 WAR of 0.58 — the highest on the team behind only Brock Purdy."

In 2023, Trent Williams and Christian McCaffrey probably would have ranked as the 49ers' two best players, but they missed a combined 20 games last season after each signed an extension during the offseason. Now it's unclear how durable they'll be in the future.

One more thing. I find it interesting that the 49ers just made Brock Purdy the highest-paid player on their team -- he's getting paid $19 million more per season Bosa. And yet, Purdy is not one of the three best players on the 49ers. He might not even rank in their top five when everyone is healthy.

In that sense, Purdy has similarities with Jared Goff, who also gets paid $53 million per season and isn't one of the three-best players on his team. He's an expensive complementary player.

So is Purdy.

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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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