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49ers Release Robert Nkemdiche

Nkemdiche did seem to improve as training camp progressed, and he made a couple nice plays in the preseason game Friday night.

Grant Cohn

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The 49ers had to trim their roster down to 85 players today. And to do so, they released veteran defensive tackle Robert Nkemdiche.

The 49ers signed Nkemdiche right before training camp, and at that time there was some optimism he might make the roster, considering he's a former first-round pick with talent, plus the 49ers have the best defensive line coach in the NFL -- Kris Kocurek.

To be fair, Nkemdiche did seem to improve as training camp progressed, and he made a couple nice plays in the preseason game Friday night against the Green Bay Packers. But frankly, he never had a realistic chance to make the 49ers' roster -- it's just too talented and deep, especially along the defensive line. It might be deepest D-line in the NFL.

In retrospect, it's commendable that Nkemdiche accepted the challenge and signed with the 49ers in the first place, given how remote his odds of making the team were. Clearly, he's confident. And he still has a chance to make another team's 53-man roster, which probably is why the 49ers released him now and not later. They did him a courtesy, so he can find another team as soon as possible. Perhaps his next team will be impressed by Nkemdiche's time with the 49ers and his tape in their first preseason game. Perhaps this experience will prove to be a positive one for him. Who knows, perhaps he'll even find his way back to the 49ers at some point.

Funny things happen in football.

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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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