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49ers Place Trent Williams on IR, Sign C Matt Hennessy to 2-Year Deal

The 49ers just added a new offensive lineman to their team.

Grant Cohn

Sep 29, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers offensive tackle Trent Williams (71) reacts after a foul negates a touchdown against the New England Patriots during the second quarter at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Neville E. Guard-Imagn Images
Sep 29, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers offensive tackle Trent Williams (71) reacts after a foul negates a touchdown against the New England Patriots during the second quarter at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Neville E. Guard-Imagn Images / Neville E. Guard-Imagn Images
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The 49ers just added a new offensive lineman to their team.

Veteran center Matt Hennessy just signed a two-year deal with the 49ers. To make room for Hennessy on the 53-man roster, they placed Trent Williams on Injured Reserve with an ankle injury.

The Williams news comes as no surprise -- head coach Kyle Shanahan said last week that Williams would be shut down for the rest of the season. But the Hennessy news is a surprise. It's unusual to sign anyone to a two-year deal at this time of the year. Hennessy comes from the Falcons' practice squad, so he's a developmental player at best and a part-time fill-in player at worst.

The Falcons originally drafted Hennessy in Round 3 of the 2020 NFL Draft. He started 22 games for them during his career, including all 17 games in 2021. Since then, he has suffered multiple knee injuries and hasn't been the same.

Perhaps the 49ers think that if they commit to Hennessy for two years instead of one, they'll give him the time he needs to make a full recovery and he'll become a starting-caliber center for them in a year. They did something similar with Jake Brendel a few years ago. They signed him to the 53-man roster with the intention of slowly grooming him to become the starting center.

Now Brendel is one of the worst starters on the team -- he's aging and the 49ers need to replace him. I imagine they'll draft a center, but if they don't, at least they have Hennessy.

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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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