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49ers Left Guard Aaron Banks Injured his MCL Against the Dolphins

Aaron Banks may have played his final game with the 49ers.

Grant Cohn

Oct 6, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers guard Aaron Banks (65) during the second quarter against the Arizona Cardinals at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images
Oct 6, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers guard Aaron Banks (65) during the second quarter against the Arizona Cardinals at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images / Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images
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Aaron Banks may have played his final game with the 49ers.

He left Sunday's loss to the Dolphins with an MCL injury and did not return. The 49ers will learn the extent of the injury today when Banks has an MRI, but it seems likely that he'll miss the final two games of the season. And then he definitely will become an unrestricted free agent. And then he probably will sign elsewhere.

The 49ers have so many other, more important players to re-sign this offseason, players such as Dre Greenlaw, Talanoa Hufanga and Charvarius Ward. Plus they might give Brock Purdy a massive multi-year contract extension. So someone has to go, and that someone probably will be Banks.

The 49ers drafted Banks in the second round of the 2021 Draft. They sat him as a rookie, then made him a starter in his second season and he has been a starter ever since. But he never has been able to fulfill the potential the 49ers thought he had when they got him.

Banks recently missed back-to-back games with a concussion. During that time, journeyman Ben Bartch replaced him and served as an upgrade. Then Bartch went down, Spencer Burford filled in and he was better than Banks as well. Which means it shouldn't be hard for the 49ers to find a true replacement next year.

Expect them to draft a guard in the first few rounds. That's what they did this year when they took right guard Dominick Puni in Round 3, and so far he has been a big success.

Let's see if the 49ers can draft another quality guard next year.

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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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