Tom Compton vs. Daniel Brunskill: 49ers Training Camp Battle

Who will win the 49ers' training camp competition to be the starting right guard?

Grant Cohn | Jul 22, 2020

The next few days, I will preview the 49ers’ top training-camp battles for 2020. Previously, I broke down the battle to be the No. 2 tight end -- Ross Dwelley versus Charlie Woerner. Now, I break down the battle to be the starting right guard:

Tom Compton versus Daniel Brunskill

Brunskill should have been the starting right guard last season, but the 49ers stuck with veteran Mike Person for way too long.

Even when Person got injured, and Brunskill replaced him for two games and outplayed him, the 49ers gave Person his job back for the playoffs and suffered for that decision. Person was dreadful in the Super Bowl. The 49ers cut him shortly after.

So they’ll make Brunskill the starter now, right?

Not necessarily.

The 49ers signed Tom Compton to a one-year, $2.7 million contract -- essentially the same deal Person had. Starter’s money. Plus Kyle Shanahan and his father, Mike Shanahan, drafted Compton in 2012. He is one of their guys. Plus he’s a veteran.

So the 49ers most likely will give Compton the majority of the starter’s reps at right guard during training camp. And to keep the job, he’ll have to show he’s a good run blocker who fits the 49ers’ run-first offense. But the 49ers won’t be able to judge his run-blocking in practice without full-speed hitting and tackling. And there will be no preseason games this year.

Meaning Compton probably won’t get a chance to lose the right-guard job until the regular season starts. And if history is an indicator, he’ll play poorly enough to lose the job by midseason, and Brunskill will take over by November at the latest.

Compton is on the clock.

Published Jul 22, 2020

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.