The 49ers Player Who Will Regress Most in 2021

Call it the Mike McGlinchey Award.

Grant Cohn | Feb 27, 2021

Recently, I created the Fred Warner Award, which goes to the 49ers player who improves most in a given year.

Now I'm creating the Mike McGlinchey Award in honor of the player who regresses most in a given year.

No one on the 49ers regressed more than McGlinchey in 2020. He went from being a respectable right tackle who weighed roughly 315 pounds to a glorified blocking tight end who weighed less than 290 pounds. He's still a good run blocker, but he can't hold his ground in pass protection against anyone. Even when he secures a block, he gets pushed into the quarterback's lap.

So who will win the Mike McGlinchey Award this year? Assuming Slim Mike doesn't take it two years in a row.

All49ers writer Nick Newman projects Jimmie Ward in particular and the secondary in general to win the McGlinchey Award in 2021. Newman's reasoning is simple: If the 49ers lose Kerry Hyder, and Nick Bosa doesn't make a full recovery, and the pass rush gets worse, the secondary will get exposed.

Fellow All49ers writer Maverick Pallack projects Hyder to win the McGlinchey Award if he returns in 2021. Because Hyder was a gamebreaker in 2020, a top-20 defensive end in the NFL. He'll have a tough time repeating his stellar performance.

I project Jimmy Garoppolo to win the McGlinchey Award, and here's why:

He can't move anymore. He's a statue. He's losing confidence. And if he returns next season, and the 49ers don't rework his contract, there's a high probability they will lose Trent Williams, meaning one of the worst pass-protecting offensive lines could get even worse. Bad news for Jimmy.

If Garoppolo stays healthy next season, I wouldn't be surprised if he finally gets benched.

Published Feb 27, 2021

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.