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PFF Ranks 49ers OG Dominick Puni the NFL's 100th Best Player of 2024

Now the 49ers have to find the next Puni.

Grant Cohn

Jan 5, 2025; Glendale, Arizona, USA; San Francisco 49ers guard Dominick Puni (77) against the Arizona Cardinals at State Farm Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images
Jan 5, 2025; Glendale, Arizona, USA; San Francisco 49ers guard Dominick Puni (77) against the Arizona Cardinals at State Farm Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images / Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images
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The 49ers need to drastically improve their offensive line this offseason, and the fact that they found Dominick Puni in Round 3 last year should give them confidence that they can draft another quality starter.

Puni started all 17 games at right guard -- a position he never played in college -- and gave the 49ers the ability to run effectively to the right side of their formations for the first time in years.

That's one reason Pro Football Focus ranked Puni the NFL's 100th best player of 2024.

"The 49ers struck gold when they selected Puni with the 87th pick in last April’s draft," writes PFF analyst Mason Cameron. "The first-year guard finished as not only the highest-graded offensive lineman in the 2024 class, but his 81.9 PFF overall grade landed him in the top six among qualifying guards in the league."

Puni finished with a higher grade than Los Angeles Chargers offensive tackle Joe Alt who was the fifth pick in the draft. That's how impressive Puni was. If he continues to improve, he could be a perennial Pro Bowler and eventually get paid more than $20 million per season.

For now, he's one of the biggest bargains on the 49ers. He's a young, terrific player at a thin position who will take up just 0.4 percent of the 49ers' cap space next season. He gives the 49ers someone in the trenches who can match up with the best defensive tackles in the NFL such as Chris Jones of the Chiefs and Jalen Carter of the Eagles.

Now the 49ers have to find the next Puni.

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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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