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The 49ers Need to Release Javon Hargrave this Offseason

The 49ers are stuck in the past.

Grant Cohn

Jul 25, 2024; Santa Clara, CA, USA; San Francisco 49ers defensive lineman Javon Hargrave answers questions at a press conference following Day 3 of training camp at SAP Performance Facility. Mandatory Credit: D. Ross Cameron-Imagn Images
Jul 25, 2024; Santa Clara, CA, USA; San Francisco 49ers defensive lineman Javon Hargrave answers questions at a press conference following Day 3 of training camp at SAP Performance Facility. Mandatory Credit: D. Ross Cameron-Imagn Images / D. Ross Cameron-Imagn Images
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The 49ers are stuck in the past.

They're an old team full of players getting paid tons of money for things they did years ago. These are the players who need to go this offseason.

One of the most overpaid players on the 49ers is veteran defensive tackle Javon Hargrave. He was outstanding a few seasons ago when he was on the Eagles, but he has been anything but impactful since he signed a four-year, $84 million contract with the 49ers last year.

In 22 career games with the 49ers, he produced 9 sacks and poor run defense. And he has been out since Week 3 with a torn triceps.

Next year, Hargrave will be 32, and his salary cap number will be $28.1 million. The 49ers cannot allocate that much of their cap to a player who can't stay on the field and isn't an impact player when he's contributing. They need to release him.

Fortunately for the 49ers, Hargrave has no guaranteed money left on his deal after this year. They can release him and not pay him another dime. And if they release him with a post-June-1 designation, they will create more than $20 million in cap space which they can roll over to 2026.

I fully expect the 49ers to release Hargrave with a post-June-1 designation just as they did with Arik Armstead last year. And then I wouldn't be surprised if the 49ers spent a first-round draft pick on a defensive tackle. They have almost no talent left at that position.

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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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