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Will the 49ers Fire Special Teams Coordinator Brian Schneider?

The 49ers special teams are bad in every way imaginable. And they've been bad for a long time.

Grant Cohn

Aug 13, 2023; Paradise, Nevada, USA; San Francisco 49ers special teams coordinator Brian Schneider watches from the sidelines against the Las Vegas Raiders at Allegiant Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images
Aug 13, 2023; Paradise, Nevada, USA; San Francisco 49ers special teams coordinator Brian Schneider watches from the sidelines against the Las Vegas Raiders at Allegiant Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images / Kirby Lee-Imagn Images
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The 49ers special teams are bad in every way imaginable. And they've been bad for a long time.

Is special teams coordinator Brian Schneider the common denomitator? Should the 49ers fire him at the bye week?

Just this past Thursday, they gave up a kick return for a touchdown. Later in the game, they almost gave up another, but their kicker, Matthew Wright, made a touchdown-saving tackle while separating his shoulder. And Wright is the backup kicker. The previous week, starting kicker Jake Moody suffered a high-ankle sprain making a tackle to save a touchdown during a kickoff. Which means the 49ers really can't cover punts or kicks well.

In addition, their punt returner, Jacob Cowing, has muffed one punt already and frequently slips and falls.

Don't forget, the 49ers muffed a punt in red zone during the Super Bowl and the Chiefs recovered and scored a touchdown on the next play. That was a six-point mistake in a game the 49ers lost by three.

So the 49ers have been winning games in spite of their special teams for a long time. This season, special teams are costing them games, which can't happen. The 49ers must hold someone responsible.

If the 49ers have another special teams gaffe that costs them a victory in the next two weeks, I believe they'll have no choice but to fire Schneider during the Week 9 bye. Because he's had more than enough time to find solutions for the problems in his unit, and so far he has found none.

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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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