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Randy Gregory Shines in his 49ers Debut

It seems the 49ers finally may have found the bookend edge rusher to complement Nick Bosa.

Grant Cohn

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So the 49ers lost to P.J. Walker on Sunday. That's never good. 

But their defense played well. And their newest player, Randy Gregory, had an excellent debut. This bodes well for the rest of the season.

In Gregory's first game with the 49ers, Gregory recorded 1 sack, 2 tackles for loss and 3 quarterback hits in just 26 snaps. For a comparison, Nick Bosa recorded 1 sack, 1 tackle for loss and 2 quarterback hits in 68 snaps. So Gregory was dominant and efficient. Expect his workload to increase heavily.

"I definitely saw him make some plays," head coach Kyle Shanahan said after the game. "I think he got a sack in there, got a TFL. It was nice to see him in some action."

It seems the 49ers finally may have found the bookend edge rusher to complement Nick Bosa. They originally traded for Dee Ford, but he was always injured. Then they signed Samson Ebukam, but he was mostly a run defender. Then they drafted Drake Jackson, but he has been a disappointment for the 49ers in his first two seasons with the team. He's not particularly good against the run or the pass.

Now the 49ers have Gregory, who's 30 and has played at a high level for stretches of his career. He had issues with consistency and maturity at times, but now he's on one of the best teams in the league. All the veterans on the 49ers should bring out the best of Gregory. That sure seemed like the case against the Browns.

Gregory looked far more motivated and aggressive in one game with the 49ers than he looked the past two seasons with the Broncos. Maybe it's because the 49ers are good and the Broncos are not. Maybe Gregory needs the games to actually matter in order to play his best.

If that's the case, the 49ers are the perfect team for 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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