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What the 49ers Still Need to Do this Offseason

The last time the 49ers thought they had a franchise quarterback was 2018 when they made Jimmy Garoppolo the highest-paid player in the NFL. That offseason, they spent their first-round pick on right tackle Mike McGlinchey.

Grant Cohn

What the 49ers Still Need to Do this Offseason
What the 49ers Still Need to Do this Offseason /
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Technically, the 49ers addressed all their needs in free agency and can take the best players available with their picks in the draft. But they still have one major thing they need to do: Protect their franchise quarterback.

No offense to Colton McKivitz and Brandon Parker, the 49ers current right tackles, but they're not good enough. They're placeholders. And the upcoming draft has at least seven offensive tackle prospects who are better right now than both McKivitz and Parker.

The 49ers have to draft one of those offensive tackles. They can't waste this opportunity to upgrade at a critical position and protect their future investment at quarterback.

The last time the 49ers thought they had a franchise quarterback was 2018 when they made Jimmy Garoppolo the highest-paid player in the NFL. That offseason, they spent their first-round pick on right tackle Mike McGlinchey.

Now, the 49ers have Brock Purdy, who's much better than Garoppolo ever was. So it's in the 49ers interest to keep Purdy upright and give him as much time to throw as possible, because he's lethal when he has time in the pocket.

If the 49ers stay put at pick no. 31 in Round 1, an offensive tackle who's better than McGlinchey and McKivitz most likely will fall to them. If the 49ers wait until Rounds 2 or 3 to draft a tackle, they probably can get one who can sit for a season and start in 2025.

If the 49ers wait until Day 3 to draft an offensive tackle, they're nuts. It's the biggest need on the team.

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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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