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Jauan Jennings Has Become the 49ers' Best Wide Receiver

Thank goodness the 49ers extended his contract before the season started.

Grant Cohn

Nov 10, 2024; Tampa, Florida, USA; Tampa Bay Buccaneers safety Josh Hayes (32) forces San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Jauan Jennings (15) out of bounds in the fourth quarter at Raymond James Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Nathan Ray Seebeck-Imagn Images
Nov 10, 2024; Tampa, Florida, USA; Tampa Bay Buccaneers safety Josh Hayes (32) forces San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Jauan Jennings (15) out of bounds in the fourth quarter at Raymond James Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Nathan Ray Seebeck-Imagn Images / Nathan Ray Seebeck-Imagn Images
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Jauan Jennings doesn't get enough credit.

Last season, he caught just 19 passes because the 49ers' relegated him to a part-time third-banana role he clearly had outgrown. Then in the Super Bowl, he showed he was the 49ers' best wide receiver. And that trend has carried over to this season.

Jennings is averaging a whopping 71 receiving yards per game -- tied for 11th-most in the NFL. He has become the 49ers' starting X receiver in place of Brandon Aiyuk who's out for the season with a torn ACL and MCL. And Sunday against the Buccaneers, Jennings led all 49ers with 11 targets. No one else got more than seven. Plus he recovered a fumble and set up the game-winning field goal with a 13-yard catch-and-run on the final drive.

Which means Jennings has become the unquestioned go-to guy in the 49ers passing offense. He's currently on pace for 1,065 yards, and that number will rise if he stays healthy. Because instead of getting 4 to 6 targets per game like he used to, now he'll get 8 to 12 targets per game.

Thank goodness the 49ers extended his contract before the season started.

Jennings was a restricted free agent this past offseason. Which means the 49ers could have given him a one-year deal and he would have been forced to play on it, then he would have become a very expensive free agent in 2025. Goodbye, Jauan.

Instead, the 49ers offered him a two-year, $15.39 million extension and he took it. That was a huge raise for the former seventh-round pick. But now, it's a fraction of what he'd be worth on the open market. He's still one of the biggest bargains on the team.

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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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