PFF Gives the 49ers Offseason a C-Plus

Quite a fair grade, if not a generous one.

Grant Cohn | May 20, 2022

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San Francisco 49ers

The draft is over, free agency has winded down and the 49ers roster is mostly set. And the experts are decidedly lukewarm on their offseason moves.

Pro Football Focus recently gave the 49ers a c-plus for their offseason, which is quite a fair grade, if not a generous one.

The 49ers certainly upgraded at cornerback when they signed Charvarius Ward away from the Kansas City Chiefs. They also upgraded their edge rush when they drafted USC defensive end Drake Jackson in Round 2. Plus they boosted their special teams with the signings of Oren Burks, George Odum and Ray-Ray McCloud.

Those were the highlights of the 49ers offseason.

These were the lowlights:

They let Laken Tomlinson and Tom Compton go and downgraded their offensive line.

They let Jaquiski Tartt go and downgraded their safety position.

They let K'Waun Williams go and downgraded their nickelback position.

They let D.J. Jones go and downgraded their run defense.

They let Arden Key go and downgraded their interior rush.

They got in a financial spat with Deebo Samuel which they have yet to resolve.

They failed to trade or release Jimmy Garoppolo.

They didn't use the $25 million in salary-cap space they would have created had they traded or released Garoppolo.

Lots of lowlights.

When you weigh those against the highlights, it seems the 49ers' offseason was filled with more negatives than positives. But if Ward and Jackson are the real deal, and the offensive line gives Lance a chance to improve, and Lance overcomes the 49ers sitting him for most of last year, we could look back at his offseason as a success.

Stay tuned.

Published May 20, 2022

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.