49ers Sign Jamar Taylor to Practice Squad

This is an ominous signing.

Grant Cohn | Oct 2, 2020

This is an ominous signing.

The 49ers announced Friday morning they signed nickelback Jamar Taylor to the practice squad, a move that doesn’t seem significant at first. Perhaps the 49ers just wanted to fill a spot on the practice squad. Or perhaps starting nickelback K’Waun Williams’ hip irritation could cause him to miss time.

Williams was a limited participant in Thursday’s practice and it’s unclear if he’s healthy enough to play Sunday night against the Philadelphia Eagles. If he can’t play, the 49ers don’t have a backup nickelback on the 53-man roster. Last season, their backup nickel was D.J. Reed, but they waived him this offseason and the Seattle Seahawks picked him up.

So if Williams can’t play against the Eagles, Taylor would be the next man up even though he’s on the practice squad. Each team this season can call up two practice squad players per week, and it seems likely Taylor will be one of the 49ers’ two call-ups this week.

Taylor, 30, spent all of training camp with the 49ers, and even took most of the first-team reps at nickelback because Williams was out with a calf injury. So Taylor has practice experience alongside the 49ers starters, plus he knows defensive coordinator Robert Saleh’s system.

But that doesn’t mean Taylor is a good player. In fact, he’s quite a step down from Williams, who’s one of the best nickelbacks in the NFL.

Williams’ injury is important to monitor. Head coach Kyle Shanahan will speak to the media Friday afternoon and provide more information. Stay tuned.

Published Oct 2, 2020

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.