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John Lynch Explains Why the 49ers Released and Re-Signed Kyle Juszczyk

With all due respect to Lynch, I simply don't buy his answer.

Grant Cohn

Feb 6, 2025; New Orleans, LA, USA; Kyle Juszczyk and his wife Kristin Juszczyk on the red carpet before Super Bowl LIX NFL Honors at Saenger Theatre. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images
Feb 6, 2025; New Orleans, LA, USA; Kyle Juszczyk and his wife Kristin Juszczyk on the red carpet before Super Bowl LIX NFL Honors at Saenger Theatre. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images / Kirby Lee-Imagn Images
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PALM BEACH -- The strangest move the 49ers made this offseason was cutting Kyle Juszczyk and then re-signing him four days later to essentially the same contract they had just terminated. And they took on a dead cap penalty to do this.

On Monday, general manager John Lynch was asked about this highly strange move.

Q: Can you explain the financials with Kyle Juszczyk? Letting him go, taking a dead cap hit and then bringing him back -- was it a win? Is it kind of a push?

LYNCH: "I think it's a win because we have a really good football player who's at the core of our leadership in on our team, was a captain last year and has a chance to make that 10-year wall. That would be really really cool. We tried to show him the respect that he deserved to go see what his market was. And that at the end, we found a way to make it work.

"When I come around these things and I'm around a smart football team, I don't think it's any secret that people have a high respect and regard for Kyle Shanahan's offensive acumen and scheme, and at the forefront of that is always the way we use Juzczyk and our fullback. It presents issues and challenges to our opponents. He takes such great care of himself that although he's older, not much has changed with him.

"For him to be able to see what was out there and us to be able to find ultimately a contract situation that worked out for him and us, that's pretty cool. We're happy to have him back. We got him back and we've done away with having to deal with this next year. I think Kyle will have two good years with us and we'll see where that goes from there. We're fired up to have the Juszczyk -- not just Kyle, but Kristen, back with the Niners."

MY TAKE: With all due respect to Lynch, I simply don't buy his answer. If re-signing Juszczyk was such a win, the 49ers never would have released him in the first place. Juszczyk is pure window dressing at this point in his career. He does not move the needle, as opposed Dre Greenlaw, who is a bonafide needle-mover.

Finally, saying he's fired up to have Juszczyk's wife back is just weird. It's almost like the Juszczyks are family friends of the 49ers and the Greenlaws weren't.

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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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