Emmanuel Moseley Doubtful Against the Eagles

Next man up.

Grant Cohn | Sep 17, 2021

The 49ers probably won't have either of their starting cornerbacks Sunday against the Philadelphia Eagles.

No. 1 cornerback Jason Verrett has a torn ACL and will miss the rest of the season. And No. 2 cornerback Emmanuel Moseley has a knee injury he suffered before the season opener and the 49ers list him as doubtful. Which means he almost certainly will not play. Never have I seen the 49ers play someone on Sunday whom they listed as doubtful on Friday.

So against the Eagles, the 49ers most likely will have to start their third and fourth cornerbacks -- rookie Deommodore Lenoir, who started last week and played well, and presumably veteran Josh Norman, who signed with the 49ers just a couple weeks ago and was inactive against the Detroit Lions.

If Norman doesn't play, the 49ers will have to start rookie Ambry Thomas, who has struggled to make easy tackles, or veteran Dontae Johnson, who's terrible, or veteran Dre Kirkpatrick, who's even worse than Johnson.

Norman is the 49ers' best option right now. And if Richard Sherman hadn't his his breakdown during the offseason, he probably would be the 49ers' best option, because he's better than Norman. But Sherman doesn't appear to be an option for any team right now, so Norman it is.

This Sunday, he at times will have to cover Eagles rookie first-round pick Devonta Smith, who won the Heisman Trophy last season and already appears to be the Eagles' No. 1 target. Is Norman up to the challenge?

He better be. He's the 49ers' only hope.

Published Sep 17, 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.