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Will 49ers LB Dee Winters Start in 2024?

The 49ers need a young linebacker to step up.

Grant Cohn

August 19, 2023; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers linebacker Dee Winters (53) after the game against the Denver Broncos at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports
August 19, 2023; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers linebacker Dee Winters (53) after the game against the Denver Broncos at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports / Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports
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The 49ers need a young linebacker to step up.

They lost Dre Greenlaw to an Achilles tear and he won't return until midseason most likely. And his replacement, De'Vondre Campbell, is 31 and on the downside of his career. The Packers recently released him. He's a temporary band-aid. And he should be serviceable, but nothing more.

If the 49ers are looking for someone better to fill in for Greenlaw, they'll need one of their young linebackers to improve. And so far this offseason, it seems like second-year linebacker Dee Winters is the most likely one to make the leap.

"I think Dee has probably had the best OTA out of anybody on the team," Fred Warner said. "I feel like he's come along since last year. I remember he came in as a rookie, was struggling to learn the plays, trying to get in shape and all of those little things that you got to learn as a professional and just coming in this year he's been on it. He's making plays left and right. He came in great shape this OTA, so he's set himself up to have a great training camp. You know he's gonna train hard this summer and have a chance."

When the 49ers drafted Winters in Round 6 last year, lots of people compared him to Greenlaw because they both play extremely fast and are shorter than six feet tall. But Winters didn't make an impact on the defense as a rookie because he wasn't ready and the 49ers didn't need him.

Now the 49ers need him. Let's see what he's got.

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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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