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Kyle Shanahan Wants the 49ers to Re-Sign Greenlaw and Hufanga

Now they're both healthy. And as a result, the 49ers defense has improved dramatically.

Grant Cohn

Oct 10, 2024; Seattle, Washington, USA; San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan stands on the sideline during the fourth quarter against the Seattle Seahawks at Lumen Field. Mandatory Credit: Joe Nicholson-Imagn Images
Oct 10, 2024; Seattle, Washington, USA; San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan stands on the sideline during the fourth quarter against the Seattle Seahawks at Lumen Field. Mandatory Credit: Joe Nicholson-Imagn Images / Joe Nicholson-Imagn Images
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SANTA CLARA -- Add Dre Greenlaw and Talanoa Hufanga to the long list of free agents the 49ers want to re-sign this offseason.

Greenlaw and Hufanga each missed most of the season due to injuries -- Greenlaw was recovering from an Achilles tear, and Hufanga was recovering from an ACL tear. Then he returned and injured his wrist.

Now they're both healthy. And as a result, the 49ers defense has improved dramatically. No wonder head coach Kyle Shanahan wants to re-sign both players this offseason when they hit free agency.

"Those are two of the better players I've been around and two of the better players on our team and two of the main reasons we've had the success here we've had," Shanahan said on Wednesday. "So, hopefully we can do everything we can to work out keeping them here because they're as much of examples of 49ers as anyone I can think of."

It's no surprise that Shanahan would want to keep two veterans who know his system and have had lots of success with the 49ers. The issue is their injury history. Greenlaw has dealt with injuries his entire career and Hufanga has dealt with them since college. At some point, if the 49ers want to get healthier as a team, they have to prioritize adding younger, more durable players and not re-signing ones who play only part of the season.

Instead of signing both Greenlaw and Hufanga, the 49ers should sign one of them and let the other walk.

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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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