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49ers All-Time Draft Bust Team: Defense

Remember these players?

Grant Cohn

Apr 28, 2017; Santa Clara, CA, USA; (l to r) San Francisco 49ers first round draft picks Reuben
Apr 28, 2017; Santa Clara, CA, USA; (l to r) San Francisco 49ers first round draft picks Reuben / Stan Szeto-USA TODAY Sports


If you had to make a team full of the biggest draft busts in 49ers franchise history, who would you pick?

We started with the offense. Now, let's do the defense.

Defensive End: Solomon Thomas (R1/2017) & Tank Carradine (R2, 2012)

Thomas is still in the league, so he's not a classic bust, but he was the third pick in the draft and he was infamously picked over Patrick Mahomes, which means he was one of the worst picks in franchise history. He had just six sacks in four seasons with the 49ers, while Tank Carradine had 5.5 sacks in four seasons with the 49ers.

Defensive Tackle: Reggie McGrew (R1/1999) & Kentwan Balmer (R1/2008)

McGrew had one sack in his three-year career, and Balmer had a whopping zero sacks. Javon Kinlaw was a bust as well because he was a top-15 pick, but he wasn't nearly as bad as these two.

Linebacker: Todd Kelly (R1/1993) & Reuben Foster (R1/2017)

Kelly and Foster were both first round picks who lasted only two years on the 49ers. Foster in particular lasted just 16 games.

Cornerback: Adrian Hardy (R2/1995), R.W. McQuarters (R1/1998) & Mike Rumph (2002)

Hardy was a second-round pick who lasted just 12 games with the 49ers. McQuarters was a first-round pick who lasted just two seasons with the 49ers. And Rumph was a first-round pick who lasted only five seasons in the NFL.

Safety: Reggie Smith (R3/2008) & Taylor Mays (R2/2010)

Smith was a third-round pick who started just seven games in his four-year career, and Mays was a second-round pick whom the 49ers traded after one year.

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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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