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Kyle Shanahan Explains Why the 49ers Released Kyle Juszczyk For 4 Days

This was by far the strangest thing the 49ers did this offseason.

Grant Cohn

Jan 5, 2025; Glendale, Arizona, USA; San Francisco 49ers fullback Kyle Juszczyk (44) against the Arizona Cardinals at State Farm Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images
Jan 5, 2025; Glendale, Arizona, USA; San Francisco 49ers fullback Kyle Juszczyk (44) against the Arizona Cardinals at State Farm Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images / Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images
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PALM BEACH -- This was by far the strangest thing the 49ers did this offseason.

First, they cut Kyle Juszczyk. Then, just four days later, they re-signed him to virtually the same deal they had terminated a few days prior. And to do all this, they took on a dead cap penalty of more than $3 million. Hard to fathom.

On Tuesday at the NFL Annual League Meeting, I asked Kyle Shanahan to explain this highly questionable move.

"It was financial things," Shanahan said. "We wanted to do that before free agency started. You guys saw how much money we got rid of trying to balance out how much we've spent here the last few years. Everything comes to balance with that and Juszczyk was part of that. Then after free agency started and we saw what we had left and he saw what was out there, the number we came to at that time worked for us and for him."

The 49ers have used this negotiating strategy frequently the past few seasons. They let a player test free agency and gauge his market, then they try to match any offer he gets. The 49ers tried to do this with Dre Greenlaw but their plan backfired when he felt insulted and metaphorically slammed the door in the 49ers' faces.

Juszczyk was much easier to re-sign because he's an old fullback, which means he's much cheaper than Greenlaw.

Still, in retrospect, the 49ers should have just done nothing if their plan was to release him and re-sign him.

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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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