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Pro Football Focus Gives the 49ers' Offseason a C-Plus

They reconfigured their defensive line but didn't necessarily improve it, then they added just one player -- a third-round pick -- to their worst position group.
Grant Cohn|
May 10, 2024; Santa Clara, CA, USA; San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan watches during the
May 10, 2024; Santa Clara, CA, USA; San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan watches during the | Robert Kupbens-USA TODAY Sports

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San Francisco 49ers

It's hard to feel enthusiastic about what the 49ers did this offseason.

They didn't even try to get better. They simply tried not to get worse, which led to lots of lateral moves for players in their 30s. And Pro Football Focus simply isn't impressed. They gave the 49ers' offseason a C-plus, the second-worst offseason grade in the NFL after the Falcons who signed Kirk Cousins and then spent a top-10 draft pick on a quarterback they didn't need.

"The Niners didn’t make a huge splash in free agency but signed some core players in Leonard Floyd, Yetur Gross-Matos and Jordan Elliott. They lost Arik Armstead and Javon Kinlaw from their defensive line but have the aforementioned new bodies to try to make up for it. Ultimately, San Francisco needs better offensive line play in 2024, and the only significant addition the team made there was third-round pick Dominick Puni. It doesn’t feel like San Francisco got better this offseason."
Trevor Sikkema, PFF Analyst

That's a good summation of the 49ers' offseason. They reconfigured their defensive line but didn't necessarily improve it, then they added just one player -- a third-round pick -- to their worst position group. Meanwhile, PFF gave the Chiefs' offseason an A, the Eagles offseason an A and the Lions offseason an A-plus.

So while the 49ers tried to merely maintain the level of excellence they achieved last year, the other Super Bowl contenders tried and succeeded to get better.

Maybe next time the 49ers should try to get better, too.

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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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