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The 49ers Sign Leonard Floyd

Next season, Floyd will be 32, which isn't young. But he has recorded at least 9 sacks four seasons in a row, including 10.5 sacks last season with the Bills.

Grant Cohn

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This is a good move.

The 49ers just signed free agent defensive end Leonard Floyd to a two-year, $20 million deal that's worth up to $24 million with incentives and has $12 million guaranteed in Year 1, according to The NFL Network.

Next season, Floyd will be 32, which isn't young. But he has recorded at least 9 sacks four seasons in a row, including 10.5 sacks last season with the Bills. He's a legitimate three-down starting defensive end who's good at rushing the quarterback and defending the run, and he hasn't missed a game since 2017. He certainly is better than every defensive end the 49ers had last season other than Nick Bosa. Now, they get to play together.

The 49ers could have made a play for a more expensive defensive end such as Danielle Hunter or Jonathan Greenard, or they could have swung for the fences and traded for Khalil Mack, Joey Bosa or Haason Reddick, but the 49ers already have a ton of money and assets invested in their defensive line. They needed to add someone who's cost effective, and that's Floyd.

But the biggest reason the 49ers signed Floyd most likely is the fact that he has played for assistant head coach Brandon Staley. Staley was the Rams' defensive coordinator in 2020 during Floyd's first season on the team, and that year he had 10.5 sacks. It was his breakout season, and it came under Staley's direction.

I'm guessing Staley recommended Floyd to the 49ers and that tipped the scale in his favor.

Now the 49ers will need to sign or draft a defensive tackle to replace Arik Armstead.

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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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