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The 49ers Sign Punter Pressley Harvin III

The 49ers have a punter problem.

Grant Cohn

Dec 3, 2023; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA; Pittsburgh Steelers punter Pressley Harvin III (6) punts the ball to the Arizona Cardinals during the fourth quarter at Acrisure Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports
Dec 3, 2023; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA; Pittsburgh Steelers punter Pressley Harvin III (6) punts the ball to the Arizona Cardinals during the fourth quarter at Acrisure Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports / Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports
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The 49ers have a punter problem.

Their starting punter, Mitch Wishnowky, has knee irritation, which means he can't participate in training camp or the preseason. So the 49ers have signed punter Pressley Harvin III to take Wishnowsky's place until he's healthy enough to return.

To make room for Harvin on the roster, the 49ers released veteran tight end Logan Thomas, who pulled his hamstring in the first week of training camp.

Harvin, 25, originally was drafted in the seventh round of the 2021 NFL Draft by the Pittsburgh Steelers. The past three seasons, he punted 217 times, averaged 43.7 yards per punt and landed 75 punts inside the opponent's 20-yard line. So he's solid, but he doesn't have a particularly strong leg.

Wishnowky's career average is 45.7 yards per punt -- he's clearly better than Harvin. Wishnowsky's job isn't in jeopardy. But he's 32 years old and his knee seems to have been bothering him for a while this offseason. The 49ers could be concerned that his injury might linger into the regular season. So it's good to bring in a second punter they can get to know now just in case they need one down the line.

It's unclear how Wishnowsky injured his knee. It's possible he tweaked while punting a football this offseason, or it's possibly the accumulation of playing football and rugby for so many years.

Either way, the 49ers have to be prepared for life without Wishnowsky if his knee acts up during the season. Now the'yre prepared.

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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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