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49ers Sign Senio Kelemete

He primarily plays guard, and not particularly well. So it would be rather strange if the 49ers signed him to replace Skule.
Grant Cohn|
49ers Sign Senio Kelemete
49ers Sign Senio Kelemete

The 49ers needed to sign an offensive lineman to replace swing tackle Justin Skule, and they just did. Sort of.

The 49ers signed veteran offensive lineman Senio Kelemete, according to the NFL Network’s Mike Garafolo, who somehow breaks lots of 49ers news all the way from New York. 

Garafolo describes Kelemete as a “versatile guy,” which is true — he can play guard and tackle. But he primarily plays guard, and not particularly well. So it would be rather strange if the 49ers signed him to replace Skule, who tore his ACL in practice this past Monday. Skule is the 32nd player who has gotten injured in practice since Kyle Shanahan became the 49ers head coach in 2017.

Kelemete, 31, grew up in Seattle and went to college at Washington. He was a fifth-round pick in 2012, and spent 2013 to 2017 with the New Orleans Saints where he started 23 games at guard.

In 2018, Kelemete signed a three-year, $12 million deal with the Houston Texans, where he started 14 games at guard his first season. But in 2019, he missed 15 games with a wrist injury. And in 2020, he was a backup who started five games at guard.

Perhaps the 49ers signed Kelemete to be a backup guard, and they intend to move someone else to tackle, someone such as rookie Jaylon Moore or second-year player Colton McKivitz. Shanahan did say last year the 49ers would have played McKivitz at left tackle if they didn’t have Trent Williams, for what it’s worth.

Or, maybe the 49ers will move Daniel Brunskill from backup center to backup tackle. Brunskill plays all five positions well and always outperformed Skule at offensive tackle in games.

Whatever the 49ers decide, as long as they never play Kelemete at tackle, they should be fine.

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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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