Why Javon Hargrave has the Worst Contract on the 49ers

Too bad the 49ers didn't just sign DeForest Buckner in 2020.

Grant Cohn | Jun 30, 2024

Feb 6, 2024; Las Vegas, NV, USA; San Francisco 49ers defensive tackle Javon Hargrave (98) during a press conference before Super Bowl LVIII at the Hilton Lake Las Vegas Resort. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports / Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

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San Francisco 49ers

The 49ers used to be extremely judicious which players they signed to big-money deals. Something changed the past few years.

They used to give out team-friendly deals only. Then they signed Javon Hargrave to a four-year, $84 million contract in 2023, and now they have salary cap problems.

Hargrave has the worst contract on the 49ers. He's 31, he's coming off a season in which he recorded just 7 sacks and he currently makes more per season on average than Christian McCaffrey, Fred Warner and George Kittle.

Just a few years ago, the 49ers traded DeForest Buckner because he wanted more than $20 million per season and that was too much for them even though Buckner was 25 years old and a franchise cornerstone in every way. So initially they tried to replace him with a first-round draft pick, Javon Kinlaw, who couldn't stay healthy. Then, in 2023, in a move of pure desperation, the 49ers gave the contract they should have given to Buckner to Hargrave, who's older than Buckner and not as good as him.

Now, unless Hargrave has a major bounce-back season in 2024, which is unlikely at his age, the 49ers will have to do with him what they did with Arik Armstead this year -- release him with a post-June-1 designation. That's what I fully expect to happen with Hargrave. They'll release him after June 1 next year, which means they won't be able to clear any cap space until free agency is mostly over.

Too bad the 49ers didn't just sign Buckner in 2020.

Published Jun 17, 2024|Modified Jun 30, 2024

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.