A Former NFL Player's Assessment of Sam Womack

"You see his size and you think he's a smaller guy, he's going to play in the slot, but I saw someone who plays like an outside cornerback."
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Our series with former NFL cornerback Eric Crocker continues today. Previously, he broke down 49ers rookies Danny Gray and Ty Davis-Price. Now, Crocker breaks down cornerback Sam Womack.

CROCKER: "One, he looks much bigger than 5'9", which is weird. It might be attributed to his long arms. He has almost 32-inch arms, so maybe that makes him look taller. He looks more like 5'11" than 5'9". And I think he plays like that. You see his size and you think he's a smaller guy, he's going to play in the slot, but I saw someone who plays like an outside cornerback, which is not a bad thing. I didn't see super quick twitch, but I did see good ball skills, and his numbers reflect that in terms of pass deflections. I think he led the conference three straight years in passes defensed. That's big time. That's showing that at the very least this guy is in position to make a play on the ball. And more times than not, he's making the play. That's awesome. I saw one play when he had an interception over his shoulder on a vertical route -- that was good. 

"It was interesting watching him. I couldn't find a whole lot of film of him, but overall I saw more of an outside guy than a nickel, and that's not to say he can't play nickel, I was just expecting to see something different because of how he was sold to me when the 49ers made that pick. I thought he was supposed to be K'Waun Williams' replacement. When I watch him, I see a legit outside cornerback."

Watch the full breakdown below.


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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.