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49ers CB Deommodore Lenoir to Miss Week 13 vs. Bills with Knee Injury

The 49ers won't have their highest-paid cornerback this Sunday when they face the Buffalo Bills.

Grant Cohn

Sep 9, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers cornerback Deommodore Lenoir (2) waits for the snap against the New York Jets at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: David Gonzales-Imagn Images
Sep 9, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers cornerback Deommodore Lenoir (2) waits for the snap against the New York Jets at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: David Gonzales-Imagn Images / David Gonzales-Imagn Images
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The 49ers won't have their highest-paid cornerback this Sunday when they face the Buffalo Bills.

Deommodore Lenoir, who signed a five-year, $88.9 million contract with the 49ers on Nov. 12, has a knee contusion and will miss their upcoming Week 13 road game.

"It's kind of like a quad contusion, but it's right on the bone, so it's in that same area," head coach Kyle Shanahan said on Friday. "It kind of acts like one. Tried to go all week and just couldn’t get it to go."

Lenoir suffered this injury last week in Green Bay. He left briefly but returned and finished the game. But once the adrenalin wore off, the pain must have been intense considering Lenoir didn't practice at all this week.

Lenoir, 25, was the 49ers' fifth-round pick in 2021. He's one of the best slot cornerbacks in the NFL considering he's giving up a passer rating of just 66.7 when targeted this season. That's why the 49ers gave him such a lucrative extension just a few weeks ago. He's a unique and rare skill set.

Fortunately for the 49ers, Charvarius Ward will play his first game since Week 8. He most likely will start opposite rookie cornerback Renardo Green, although he's questionable with a neck injury. Assuming he plays, in the nickel defense Green most likely will cover the slot receiver while Ward and Isaac Yiadom will cover outside. That's a good trio even without Lenoir.

Given that the game will be played in a blizzard, Lenoir's absence might not ruin the 49ers' chances considering the game could come down to run defense.

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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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