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Will the 49ers Trade Charvarius Ward Before the Deadline?

Charvarius Ward seems like the odd man out.

Grant Cohn

Feb 5, 2024; Las Vegas, NV, USA; San Francisco 49ers cornerback Charvarius Ward (7) during Super Bowl LVIII Opening Night at Allegiant Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images
Feb 5, 2024; Las Vegas, NV, USA; San Francisco 49ers cornerback Charvarius Ward (7) during Super Bowl LVIII Opening Night at Allegiant Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images / Kirby Lee-Imagn Images
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Charvarius Ward seems like the odd man out.

He will be a free agent at the end of this season and presumably would like an extension because he has earned one and all players want financial security. But he almost certainly won't get an extension from the 49ers because they extended Brandon Aiyuk and they're going to extend Brock Purdy and they want to extend Deommodore Lenoir who's just 25.

Ward is 28, and although he's coming off a Pro Bowl season, he currently has a knee injury and he's playing the worst football of his career according to him. Perhaps he would like a fresh start somewhere else. Somewhere that's invested in him.

And maybe the 49ers feel they can trade him for a player at an another position. Maybe they feel they can win with Lenoir, Renardo Green and Isaac Yiadom at cornerback. Those three certainly performed well this past Thursday night during the 49ers' 36-24 win over the Seattle Seahawks. They shut down D.K. Metcalf, one of the best wide receivers in the NFL.

After the game when a reporter asked Kyle Shanahan if he was surprised that the 49ers did so well against Metcalf without Ward on the field, Shanahan said, "Not really. Lenoir is one of the best cornerbacks in the league, Green is stepping up and Yiadom has done a hell of a job."

Sounds like the time has come for the 49ers and Ward to go their separate ways.

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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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