11 Reasons the 49ers Should Not Re-Sign Richard Sherman

1. He's 33.

Grant Cohn | May 7, 2021

There might be a couple reasons the 49ers should re-sign veteran cornerback Richard Sherman.

But there are many, many more reasons the 49ers should NOT re-sign him. Here are those reasons.

1. He's 33.

2. He was horrendous last season -- he gave up a quarterback rating of 116.2.

3. He injured his calf after the first week of the season and missed 11 games.

4. He has a surgically-repaired Achilles tendon and his body seems to be breaking down.

5. Rookie cornerback Ambry Thomas is better than him right now and deserves all the playing time Sherman would take.

6. Sherman is by far the slowest cornerback in the NFL.

7. Sherman is so slow, he probably can't crack a 4.8 40-yard dash.

8. Sherman is so slow, he simply cannot play man-to-man coverage anymore. He is limited to zone coverage. Which means his defense is limited to zone. And that's not good.

9. Sherman getting injured last season was the best thing that happened to the 49ers defense. Once he was out, the 49ers could cover man to man, which allowed them to blitz and generate pressure.

10. Robert Saleh probably wouldn't be a head coach right now had Sherman played 16 games in 2020. Because when Sherman went down, Saleh totally changed his defensive philosophy and showed range and adaptability. And he improved.

11. Sherman is too slow to play cornerback in the NFL -- he needs to move to safety. And the 49ers don't need another injury-prone safety. He can take his talents elsewhere.

Published May 7, 2021

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.