49ers Sign Isaiah Oliver

Why did the 49ers want Oliver instead of Emmanuel Moseley?

Grant Cohn | Mar 15, 2023

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San Francisco 49ers

The 49ers just replaced one cornerback who tore his ACL with another cornerback who tore his ACL.

The 49ers reportedly have signed former Atlanta Falcons cornerback Isaiah Oliver, who tore his ACL in 2021. He will replace former 49ers cornerback Emmanuel Moseley, who tore his ACL in 2022 and recently signed a one-year deal with the Detroit Lions.

So why did the 49ers want Oliver instead of Moseley?

The answer probably has something to do with new 49ers defensive coordinator Steve Wilks. He doesn't know Moseley the way DeMeco Ryans and Robert Saleh do. And Moseley might not be the best fit for what Wilks wants to do on defense.

Wilks is a zone coverage guru -- he uses zone more than most defensive coordinators. And Moseley isn't great in zone coverage, because he lacks eye discipline, which means he gets distracted and sometimes busts coverages. Remember, he was the one who blew the zone coverage on 3rd and 15 in the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl when Tyreek Hill burned the 49ers for a long catch.

Moseley is much better in man-to-man coverage, because he gets to turn his back to the quarterback and chase the wide receiver, and that's how Ryans used him.

Wilks most likely wants an outside cornerback who's bigger than Moseley and better in zone coverage. That's Oliver. He's 6'0", 210 lbs. And now he'll get to play behind a dominant front seven for the first time in his career.

If Oliver wins the starting cornerback job, the 49ers can move Deommodore Lenoir back to nickelback, where he started last season before Moseley went down.

Published Mar 15, 2023

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.