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49ers DE Nick Bosa Ranked No. 27 in NFL's Top 100 List

Bosa has so much to prove.

Grant Cohn

Feb 5, 2024; Las Vegas, NV, USA; San Francisco 49ers defensive end Nick Bosa (97) during Super Bowl LVIII Opening Night at Allegiant Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
Feb 5, 2024; Las Vegas, NV, USA; San Francisco 49ers defensive end Nick Bosa (97) during Super Bowl LVIII Opening Night at Allegiant Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports / Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
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What a come down.

Last year, the players voted Nick Bosa the league's fourth-best player in the NFL's annual Top 100 List. This year, he's no. 27, just one spot ahead of Brock Purdy, and behind Christian McCaffrey (no. 3), Trent Williams (no. 7), Fred Warner (no. 11) and George Kittle (no. 14).

This is a fair ranking for Bosa. Maybe even a bit generous.

He no longer is the best player on the 49ers defense -- Fred Warner is. That's clear. What's unclear is if Bosa will have a bounce-back season. He went from recording 18.5 sacks in 2022 to 10.5 sacks in 2023. Which means his production was practically cut in half.

In addition, Bosa takes lots of plays off -- he's on the field for just 75 percent of the 49ers' defensive snaps. And his run defense isn't good.

Bosa has excellent pass-rush moves, but so does his brother, Joey Bosa, who ranked no. 70 on this year's Top 100 List. Joey Bosa used to be considered one of the best players in the NFL before he got his monster contract extension from the Chargers. Now, his effort is inconsistent. It's unclear what drives him. Does he really love the sport as much as other great players do?

Nick Bosa is facing the same question. He frequently takes days off during training camp even though he's healthy and he's only 26. As opposed to Warner, who's 27 and never takes a day off in camp. Neither does Deebo Samuel, who ranks no. 30 on the NFL's Top 100 List.

Bosa has so much to prove.

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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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