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Will the 49ers Make a Splash at the Trade Deadline?

The 49ers seem flat this season.

Grant Cohn

Oct 27, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers general manager John Lynch and Tony Dungy before the start of the game against the Dallas Cowboys at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Neville E. Guard-Imagn Images
Oct 27, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers general manager John Lynch and Tony Dungy before the start of the game against the Dallas Cowboys at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Neville E. Guard-Imagn Images / Neville E. Guard-Imagn Images
In this story:

The 49ers seem flat this season.

They don't have the same urgency and attention to detail that they displayed in past seasons. That's why they're 4-4 and can't close games. They're one of the oldest teams in the league and they're breaking down. They need an infusion of talent and urgency. Someone who isn't pacing himself for the long season.

It's possible Christian McCaffrey will be that player if/when he returns from bilateral Achilles' tendonitis. But asking a player who missed the entire offseason and half of the regular season to return suddenly and carry the team to the Super Bowl seems somewhat unrealistic.

Instead of hoping McCaffrey saves their season, the 49ers could be proactive and trade for a player before the Nov. 5 deadline.

The 49ers have been active at the deadline before. In 2019, they traded for wide receiver Emmanuel Sanders who helped the team reach the Super Bowl. In 2023, they traded for defensive end Chase Young at the deadline, and he was a giant disappointment, but the 49ers made it back to the Super Bowl nonetheless.

In each case, the 49ers knew they weren't good enough to make it to the Super Bowl and needed to add someone new. Last season, they needed another pass rusher.

This season, they also need another pass rusher.

Young is gone. Drake Jackson is out for the year. Yetur Gross Matos is on Injured Reserve. And Leonard Floyd has been invisible. He was supposed to be the best edge rusher they've had opposite Nick Bosa, but so far Floyd has been a bust.

Instead of waiting for Floyd to improve -- he's 32 -- don't be surprised if the 49ers trade for an edge rusher on Monday or Tuesaday.

Stay tuned.

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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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