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The 49ers' Biggest Liability on Offense

The biggest liability on offense this season is the same thing it was last season.
The 49ers' Biggest Liability on Offense
The 49ers' Biggest Liability on Offense

SANTA CLARA -- The 49ers' biggest liability on offense isn't their quarterback, and it's not their running backs, either.

The biggest liability on offense this season is the same thing it was last season -- the offensive line. Specifically, the center Alex Mack, and the right guard Daniel Brunskill.

Don't believe me? Watch my breakdown of Mack's and Brunskill's awful performances from this past Sunday against the Green Bay Packers.

The 49ers knew they were weak at center and right guard coming into the season. That's why they signed Mack in free agency and drafted Aaron Banks is Round 2. But Banks has been a healthy scratch every game this season, and Mack has been a dissappointment. He will turn 36 in November, and he's playing like it. He flailed and whiffed on at least a half dozen blocks Week 3.

Which means the 49ers failed to improve the biggest weaknesses on their offense. Mack and Banks were supposed to be major improvements. Instead, the 49ers still have a weak interior offensive line. But, hey, at least they spent their first round pick on a backup quarterback.

The 49ers offense will continue to struggle against good defensive lines as long as Mack and Brunskill are in the starting lineup. Which means the 49ers need to find long-term solutions at those positions. Mack and Brunskill are mere bandaids who can't cover up the problem.

If only the 49ers had spent their second round pick on, say, Josh Myers, the Packers current starting center, instead of Banks.

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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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