Will Isaac Guerendo Return Kickoffs for the 49ers?
Suddenly, kickoff returners matter again.
The NFL changed the kickoff rule this offseason to encourage more kick returns and fewer touchbacks. The inspiration for this change is Devin Hester, the legendary Chicago Bears kick returner who got inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame this year. Of course, the NFL remembered that kick returns are exciting and now the league is trying to bring them back.
Now the 49ers need a kick returner.
The past few seasons, their kick returner was Ray Ray McCloud, but he recently signed with the Atlanta Falcons. And he rarely returned kickoffs anyway. He mostly watched as they flew over his head. So who will replace him?
The 49ers could turn to Deebo Samuel who returned kickoffs in college, but it's doubtful that they will play such an important, expensive player on special teams. Maybe he'll be the kick returner in the playoffs, but probably not until then.
Which brings us to rookie running back Isaac Guerendo. He currently is fourth on the running-back depth chart behind Christian McCaffrey, Elijah Mitchell and Jordan Mason, so it's unlikely the 49ers will give Guerendo any carries this year.
But they drafted him for a reason, and the reason could be to return kickoffs. He ran a 4.33 at The Combine, and the past two seasons he returned 30 kickoffs and gained 23.8 yards per return. He was respectable. And it's possible the 49ers feel his skill set is a good fit for the NFL's new kickoff rules.
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.