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Will 49ers Spend Another High Draft Pick on a Running Back this Year?

Running back is one of the most underrated needs on the 49ers.

Grant Cohn

Nov 2, 2024; Iowa City, Iowa, USA; Iowa Hawkeyes running back Kaleb Johnson (2) runs for a 16 yard touchdown against the Wisconsin Badgers during the second quarter at Kinnick Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Jeffrey Becker-Imagn Images
Nov 2, 2024; Iowa City, Iowa, USA; Iowa Hawkeyes running back Kaleb Johnson (2) runs for a 16 yard touchdown against the Wisconsin Badgers during the second quarter at Kinnick Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Jeffrey Becker-Imagn Images / Jeffrey Becker-Imagn Images
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Running back is one of the most underrated needs on the 49ers.

When Christian McCaffrey isn't healthy, they generally don't win. And they don't know if he can stay healthy anymore. They hope he can stay healthy, but they must be prepared to play long stretches of games without him. And they don't have another running back who has proven he can carry the load week in and week out as a starter.

Jordan Mason is a promising young talent who runs extremely hard, but he got injured twice last season he never has been a bell-cow running back -- not even in college. He always split time with another running back.

Same goes for Isaac Guerendo. He's a good backup running back, but he hasn't shown he can hold up as a starter. He never has run the ball more than 132 times in a season, and that includes six years of college.

Which brings us to this year's draft. Don't be surprised if the 49ers take one of the top running backs this year. They need someone who has proven he can carry a heavy workload because they're a run-first team. They can spend as much money as they want on wide receivers and a quarterback, but they generally win when they run more than they pass.

Iowa's Kaleb Johnson and Arizona State's Cam Skattebo are two running backs the 49ers might like. Both are bellcows who fit the outside-zone blocking scheme and catch passes.

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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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