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The 49ers Sign Yetur Gross-Matos to a Two-Year Deal

Gross-Matos is a former second-round pick who spent the first four seasons with the Panthers.

Grant Cohn

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Suddenly, the 49ers are deep at defensive end.

They just signed Yetur Gross-Matos to a two-year, $18 million contract, according to The NFL Networks' Ian Rapoport. This news comes just a few hours after it was announced that the 49ers have signed Leonard Floyd to a two-year, $20 million deal that could increase to $24 million with incentives.

So instead of the 49ers signing a high-priced defensive end such as Danielle Hunter to a four- or five-year deal worth more than $20 million annually on average, the 49ers signed two defensive ends and gave them each a two-year deal.

Gross-Matos, 26, is a run-defending specialist. He's 6-5, 265, which means he has the size and the frame to set the edge in the 49ers' Wide 9 defensive front. Consider him a younger, healthier, better version of Clelin Ferrell, the 49ers' run-defending specialist at defensive end last season.

Gross-Matos is a former second-round pick who spent the first four seasons with the Panthers, who saw him as a disappointment because they drafted him to sack the quarterback, something he doesn't do particularly well. Last season, he had just 4.5 sacks, which was his career high. So he won't play much on passing downs.

And that's because the 49ers also signed Floyd, who is a pass-rushing specialist at this stage of his career. He's 6-3, 240 pounds, which means he's much smaller than Gross-Matos and less adept at stopping the run. So he won't have to.

The 49ers decided to go with a platoon at defensive end. Seems like a prudent choice.

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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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