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How the 49ers Will Replace Arden Key

Make no mistake -- Key is a significant loss for the 49ers.

Grant Cohn

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The 49ers lost a crucial member of their pass rush this week.

Arden Key signed a one-year deal worth up to $7 million with the Jacksonville Jaguars. The 49ers didn't have enough cap space to re-sign him.

Key became the 49ers' best interior rusher in 2021. He finished the season with 6.5 sacks -- second-most on the defense after Nick Bosa, which is impressive, considering Key recorded those 6.5 sacks in just 374 snaps, as opposed to Arik Armstead, who recorded 6 sacks in 820 snaps.

Make no mistake -- Key is a significant loss for the 49ers. And they lost him because they refuse to cut Jimmy Garoppolo and free up $17.5 million in cap space now and another $7.5 million when he passes a physical. They'd rather hold onto Jimmy Garoppolo and maybe get a third-round draft pick in 2023 for him than create cap space and re-sign impact players such as Key. So the 49ers will need someone on the roster to step up and replace him.

Perhaps a defensive end can move to defensive tackle and become an interior third-down pass rusher the way Key did last season. Perhaps Charles Omenihu is that player.

Or, maybe the 49ers are counting on Maurice Hurst, who came to the 49ers from the Raiders last year, same as Key. Hurst was a more effective pass rusher on the Raiders than Key was. Perhaps Hurst will be a more effective pass rusher than Key on the 49ers, too.

Hurst missed almost all of last season with a calf injury, but if he can stay healthy this season, he could become a key contributor. 

Sorry for the awful pun.

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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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