Should the 49ers Re-Sign Jason Verrett?

If the 49ers want Jason Verrett, they'll have to pay up.

Grant Cohn | Mar 8, 2021

If the 49ers want Jason Verrett, they'll have to pay up.

The veteran cornerback intends to hit free agency, according to Pro Football Chase. This decision makes sense for Verrett, a former first-round pick who easily could have earned $100 million in his career had he stayed healthy. But instead, the 29-year old has earned "just" $19.5 million. He should go get what he can now.

He missed basically all of 2017, 2018 and 2019 with injuries, not to mention most of 2014 and 2016, too. The only times he has played more than 700 snaps in a season were 2015 and 2020. And the 802 snaps he played this past season for the 49ers were a personal best.

He. still missed three games.

Verrett never has played more than 14 games in a season. Next season, the NFL schedule will expands to 17 games. And Verrett will turn 30 on June 18.

To be fair, he was fabulous last season -- probably a top-10 cornerback in the NFL. He broke up 7 passes, intercepted 2 passes, gave up one 1 touchdown and allowed a passer rating of just 76.2. And Week 16 against the Arizona Cardinals, Verrett limited All Pro wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins to just 4 catches for 35 yards on 10 targets. Verrett erased him from the game, and the 49ers won with C.J. Freaking Beathard at quarterback. Verrett was the MVP of the game.

So his stock is higher than ever. He probably can land a more lucrative deal than the three-year, $28.5 million contract the 49ers gave Jimmie Ward last year.

And the 49ers probably won't give Verrett more than they gave Ward.

They 49ers can't afford to invest more money in another 30-year old defensive back who can't stay healthy. They need to spend most of their salary-cap space on contract extensions for Fred Ward and Trent Williams, and have invested far too much into injury prone players already. The 49ers need to let some other team roll the dice on Verrett's future.

And then the 49ers need to draft a cornerback before Round 3, something they haven't done in 17 years.

Au revoir, Jason.

Published Mar 8, 2021

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.