Deebo Samuel Finally is Living Up to his Contract with the 49ers

When Samuel is motivated and in shape, the 49ers are nearly impossible to beat.
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Deebo Samuel said he was awful last season.

And while that was an overstatement, he certainly did not live up to the contract extension he signed just before last season that pays him an average of nearly $24 million per season -- by far the most of all the 49ers' offensive weapons. He missed 4 games, gained only 864 yards from scrimmage and scored a mere 5 touchdowns. And that's because he was overweight and out of shape, according to Samuel.

This season, Samuel came into the offseason slim and in terrific shape -- he was determined to prove last season was a blip, and aberration. Not the real Deebo. And yet, until recently, his 2023 season was almost exactly like his 2022 season. Forgettable. At times, Samuel looked like the fourth-best weapon on the offense after Christian McCaffrey, Brandon Aiyuk and George Kittle. Samuel looked superfluous and redundant.

But he injured his shoulder Week 6 against the Browns and missed a month, which means it took him a few games to get back into football shape. But he's in football shape now, and for the first time in two years, he's playing like the best offensive weapon in football. In the 49ers' past three games, Samuel has 384 yards from scrimmage and 6 touchdowns. He has been completely unstoppable and everything the 49ers hoped he'd be when they gave him all that money.

When Samuel is motivated and in shape, the 49ers are nearly impossible to beat. So if he maintains his current level of play, I'm sure the 49ers will forgive him for the past year and a half.


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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.