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Kyle Shanahan: Why the 49ers Replaced Arik Armstead with Maliek Collins

"It wasn't something we really wanted to happen."

Grant Cohn

Super Bowl LVIII - San Francisco 49ers v Kansas City Chiefs
Super Bowl LVIII - San Francisco 49ers v Kansas City Chiefs / Michael Zagaris/GettyImages

ORLANDO -- Kyle Shanahan was asked why the 49ers released Arik Armstead and replaced him by trading a seventh-round pick for Maliek Collins Tuesday at the NFL Annual Meeting. Here's what he said.

Q: What was the process of releasing Arik Armstead like?

SHANAHAN: "It was real tough. We've been with Arik since we've been here and I know he was here a couple years before us. It wasn't something we really wanted to happen. It was one of the tough things, trying to keep the team together and the way it goes with the salary cap and stuff. He got in a good spot. Really happy for him and where he ended up, but hated to see him go."

Q: What do you like about Maliek Collins?

SHANAHAN: "We were pumped to get Maliek, just what he's done the past few years. We love how much football he has played, how healthy he has stayed. We really wanted to add some guys that we felt had some good health history, and Maliek has done a hell of a job with that."

TRANSLATION: The 49ers didn't want to release Arik Armstead. They thought they could get him to take a pay cut because he missed 13 games due to injury the past two seasons, but he refused,because he still could get lots of money on the open market, which surprised the 49ers. So they replaced him with a player who wasn't in demand -- remember, they acquired Collins for a mere seventh-round pick. And the only thing Shanahan could praise about Collins is his health history. Which means the 49ers didn't necessarily upgrade this position.

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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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