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49ers to Hire Boston College Assistant Ray Brown as Cornerbacks Coach

Robert Saleh is beginning to fill out the 49ers' defensive coaching staff.

Grant Cohn

Jan 5, 2025; Glendale, Arizona, USA; Detailed view of a San Francisco 49ers helmet at State Farm Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images
Jan 5, 2025; Glendale, Arizona, USA; Detailed view of a San Francisco 49ers helmet at State Farm Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images / Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images
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Robert Saleh is beginning to fill out the 49ers' defensive coaching staff.

First, he let go of assistant head coach Brandon Staley who apparently specialized in coaching the secondary for the 49ers. Now, Saleh and the 49ers are set to hire Boston College secondary coach Ray Brown as their cornerbacks coach according to Matt Zenitz of CBS Sports.

Brown originally was a cornerback at East Central University where he graduated in 2009. Since then, he has been a defensive backs coach in college for seven different schools. This past season, he coached under former Houston Texans head coach Bill O'Brien at Boston College, so maybe that's how he landed on Saleh's radar.

Brown's primary job will be to develop the 49ers' young cornerbacks such as Renardo Green and Darrell Luter Jr. Green in particular looked extremely promising during 2024, and Luter Jr. hasn't had much of an opportunity to play since the 49ers drafted him in 2023.

Brown's secondary job (no pun intended) could be to help Saleh, Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch draft players this offseason. Brown probably knows the top cornerbacks coming out of college extremely well. In addition, he should know the top players coming out of Boston College -- edge rusher Donovan Ezeiruaku and offensive tackle Ozzy Trapilo.

The 49ers desperately need to draft an edge rusher and an offensive tackle, and those two Boston College products will be available on Day 2 of the NFL Draft. Perhaps the 49ers like them and need more intel which Brown can provide.

Something to keep in mind.

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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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