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Is Deebo Samuel Entering his Final Season with the 49ers?

Grant Cohn

Jul 26, 2024; Santa Clara, CA, USA; San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Deebo Samuel (1) pauses during drills on Day 4 of training camp at SAP Performance Facility. Mandatory Credit: D. Ross Cameron-Imagn Images
Jul 26, 2024; Santa Clara, CA, USA; San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Deebo Samuel (1) pauses during drills on Day 4 of training camp at SAP Performance Facility. Mandatory Credit: D. Ross Cameron-Imagn Images / D. Ross Cameron-Imagn Images
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All offseason, it has been reported that the 49ers eventually would have to choose whom to keep long-term: Deebo Samuel or Brandon Aiyuk.

So when the 49ers finally gave Aiyuk a four-year, $120 million extension, it seemed the organization had chosen to keep Aiyuk for the future and not Samuel. But then the 49ers renegotiated Samuel's deal a few days ago and converted his base salary to a signing bonus, a move that creates lots of cap space for this season.

So is it possible the 49ers will keep both Aiyuk and Samuel for the long haul?

Yes, it's possible. Head coach Kyle Shanahan clearly loves Samuel and has a ton of power in the organization. So if Shanahan insists on keeping Samuel, the 49ers probably will keep him.

But just because they restructured his deal doesn't mean he has security for next year. Don't forget that the 49ers restructured Arik Armstead's contract one day before the regular season started last year and then cut him after he refused to take a pay cut this offseason.

The 49ers could do something extremely similar to Samuel next offseason. If he misses time due to injury, which he does every year, the 49ers could feel he needs to take a massive pay cut to stay on the roster at age 29. And if he refuses to take one, he could finish his career somewhere else. Which means his restructured contract really doesn't matter.

If Samuel is going to finish his career with the 49ers, he'll need Shanahan to lobby in his favor.

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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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