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Dee Winters could be the 49ers' Most Improved Player this Year

Expect Winters to have a big season.

Grant Cohn

Oct 6, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers linebacker Dee Winters (53) reacts after a tackle against the Arizona Cardinals during the first quarter at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images
Oct 6, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers linebacker Dee Winters (53) reacts after a tackle against the Arizona Cardinals during the first quarter at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images / Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images
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The 49ers might not need to draft Dre Greenlaw's replacement, because they might have that player already.

Dee Winters is entering his third season and he could be ready to break out as a key starter for the 49ers.

The 49ers drafted Winters in Round 6 of the 2023 NFL Draft because he's similar to Greenlaw. Meaning Winters is violent and extremely fast -- he ran a 4.49 at the NFL Scouting Combine. He embodies the "all gas, no brake" mentality Robert Saleh wants to instill in the defense.

Last season, Winters had to take a back seat to veteran De'Vondre Campbell for most of the season even though Winters was better than Campbell. Turns out, Campbell quit the team mid-game when he finally got benched. So that's probably why they started him for so long even though he wasn't good.

So Winters played just 398 defensive snaps last season. And he played behind an awful defensive line that couldn't stop the run, so he kept having to take on blocks from offensive linemen who are twice his size.

Now, the 49ers are revamping their defensive line. They've released Javon Hargrave, Maliek Collins and Leonard Floyd -- three pass rushers who struggle to stop the run -- and presumably will replace them with better run defenders. Guys who can tie up the offensive linemen and keep Winters clean so he can do what he does best -- run and hit.

Expect Winters to have a big season.

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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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