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The 49ers Have Asked Kyle Juszczyk to Take a Pay Cut

When this news first came out, I sided with the 49ers. They've taken care of Juszczyk.

Grant Cohn

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Another veteran might be gone soon.

The 49ers have asked Kyle Juszczyk to take a pay cut, according to Adam Caplan, and the two sides haven't come to an agreement yet. Which means Juszczyk could decline the pay cut and choose to become a free agent if he thinks he can get more money on the open market than what the 49ers are offering him.

That's precisely what Arik Armstead just did. The 49ers asked him to take a pay cut, they tried to come to an agreement, failed, and now they're going to release him. It's possible he'll re-sign with the 49ers, but it's more likely he'll get a larger offer elsewhere and leave.

When this news first came out, I sided with the 49ers. They've taken care of Juszczyk and Armstead, and those two are extremely overpaid. It's time for them to take care of the 49ers. Paying Juszczyk $7.5 million this year doesn't help the team win the Super Bowl, and neither does paying Arik Armstead $28.3 million.

The 49ers have paid Juszczyk more than $35 million to go in motion, block sometimes and be a decoy. They almost never give him the ball. Dude, take the pay cut.

The 49ers chose to keep Armstead over DeForest Buckner. Since then, the 49ers have paid Armstead more than $66 million for 14.5 sacks and good run defense when he's on the field, which isn't all the time. Dude, take the pay cut.

You'd think those two players would want one more chance to win a Super Bowl, but maybe they've lost confidence in this team or their head coach, Kyle Shanahan. Remember, Juszczyk and Armstead were the two players after the Super Bowl loss who said they didn't know the playoff overtime rules, implying that Shanahan didn't prepare them.

If that's the case, I don't blame Juszczyk and Armstead. The 2023 49ers were one of the best teams ever to not win a Super Bowl. If Shanahan can't win with that roster, maybe he just can't win.

Stay tuned. We'll see what Juszczyk decides to do.

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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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