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John Lynch Says 49ers TE Brayden Willis Will Be a Good Player

"It shouldn't come as a surprise that the 49ers let backup tight end Charlie Woerner sign with the Falcons a few weeks ago and didn't sign anyone to replace him."

Grant Cohn

Dec 10, 2023; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers tight end Brayden Willis (9) before
Dec 10, 2023; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers tight end Brayden Willis (9) before / Darren Yamashita-USA TODAY Sports

ORLANDO -- The 49ers think they may have found their heir apparent to George Kittle.

General manager John Lynch discussed his roster this week during the NFL Annual Meeting, and unprompted he praised second-year tight end Brayden Willis.

"Brayden really siezed that opportunity and I think he's going to be a good player," Lynch said when discussing the backup tight ends. "He helped us a lot on special teams, but then played meaningful snaps at the end of the season. I think he has a chance to be a good player for us."

Which means Willis has a chance to become a starter one day.

The 49ers drafted Willis in the seventh round last year -- he was nearly Mr. Irrelevant -- and he was the second tight end they drafted after Cam Latu in Round 3. But Latu was so bad in training camp and preseason, the 49ers shut him down for the entire season by putting him on the Injured Reserve List before the regular season started. He just might be a bust.

As opposed to Willis, who didn't catch any passes as a rookie, but appeared in 7 regular season games, played 48 snaps on offense and 101 snaps on special teams. Clearly, the 49ers liked him enough to put him on the field as a rookie, even in the Super Bowl. That's something they don't always do.

So it shouldn't come as a surprise that the 49ers let backup tight end Charlie Woerner sign with the Falcons a few weeks ago and didn't sign anyone to replace him. Willis is the replacement.

Published
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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