49ers HC Kyle Shanahan is Excited About Dominick Puni

Offensive lines need continuity and Puni provides that.

Grant Cohn | Aug 13, 2024

Mar 2, 2024; Indianapolis, IN, USA; Kansas offensive lineman Dominick Puni (OL59) talks to the media during the 2024 NFL Combine at Lucas Oil Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Trevor Ruszkowski-USA TODAY Sports / Trevor Ruszkowski-USA TODAY Sports

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San Francisco 49ers

SANTA CLARA -- Of all the 49ers' rookies, Dominick Puni has the best chance to start Week 1 against the New York Jets.

The 49ers generally prefer not to start rookies unless they absolutely have to. But last year's starting right guards -- Jon Feliciano and Spencer Burford -- both are injured. And so Puni has taken every first-string rep at right guard in training camp, and he has played well.

"We were excited about him right away," said head coach Kyle Shanahan. "But when you lose the two guys in front of him who both started a lot of games last year, a guy gets thrown in there before you want to throw them in there. Sometimes that can make guys better, but sometimes when they get put in a position that they aren't quite ready for you get overwhelmed and it takes you a while to kind of get that confidence back. He's been good since his first snap. So it hasn't seemed too big for him. He's gotten better each day in practice. And when you see that, you really want to see how it is in the game and see if anything changes. He looked the same in the game as practice. So we're excited about that."

Puni wouldn't have gotten this opportunity to start so quickly without injuries to the veterans ahead of him on the depth chart. But now that he has played day after day with the starters and performed well, there's no reason to take him out of the lineup. Offensive lines need continuity and Puni provides that.

Published Aug 13, 2024

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.