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49ers Sign Wide Receiver Mohamed Sanu

This is desperation.

Grant Cohn

This is desperation.

The San Francisco 49ers just signed free-agent wide receiver Mohamed Sanu, according to the NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport. 

Sanu knows head coach Kyle Shanahan’s offensive system because he played for Shanahan in 2016 on the Atlanta Falcons.

Sanu used to be good. He’s 31 now. In 2018, he caught 66 passes for 838 yards and four touchdowns. But he slowed down significantly in 2019. He averaged only 9.5 yards per catch for the Falcons -- a big disappointment -- before they traded him to the New England Patriots, where he was an even bigger disappointment. He averaged only 8 yards per catch for New England.

So this offseason, the Patriots cut Sanu even though they need wide receivers. Their No. 3 receiver, Damiere Byrd, just caught zero passes in their season opener.

If Sanu were still good, the Patriots would still have him.

But the Niners probably don’t expect Sanu to be good at this stage of his career. They’re desperate -- they’ll take anything they can get from a receiver who knows Shanahan’s offense.

At least Sanu can play right away. Who knows, he might even be better than their current slot receiver, Trent Taylor, who hasn’t played well since 2017. Taylor caught two passes for a whopping seven yards against the Cardinals.

So the 49ers may have found a small upgrade at slot receiver. Big whoop. The 49ers need a major upgrade at wide receiver pronto. They currently have one of the worst wide-receiver corps in the NFL.

Instead of keeping $11.2 million in salary-cap space for 2020, the 49ers should have spent $4 million of that to keep Emmanuel Sanders -- that’s how much he costs the New Orleans Saints this season.

The 49ers went ultra-cheap and signed Sanu.

You get what you pay for.

Published
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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