The 49ers currently have two outside cornerbacks under contract: Emmanuel Moseley and sophomore Ambry Thomas. Nickel cornerback Deommodore Lenoir lurks as an emergency option, but his role seems billed as K'Waun Williams' understudy. This gives San Francisco two real options to face off against Cooper Kupp, DeAndre Hopkins, and others.
That's...concerning.
The past two seasons in San Francisco have provided plenty of insight into what happens to teams that don't adequately bolster their cornerback position. In 2020, a slew of injuries forced practice squad cornerback Brian Allen into the fore, where he gave up five catches for 124 yards, a touchdown, and two defensive pass interference penalties against the mighty *checks notes* Ryan Fitzpatrick. In 2021, the 49ers again faced a cornerback shortage and turned to the "peanut-punching" Josh Norman, who produced a few forced fumbles and not a lot else before Ambry Thomas eventually took his spot in the pecking order.
The 49ers should probably avoid either of those situations again.
Enter Stephon Gilmore, whose re-entry into the free agency market coincides nicely with the 49ers' needs. Gilmore, who came up with the Buffalo Bills and later played with the New England Patriots, is coming off a one-year deal with the Carolina Panthers. He played only eight games but still performed well enough to make the Pro Bowl as an alternate. Considering the options, Gilmore is one of the few viable options for the 49ers if they want to seriously upgrade their cornerback position. Even while dealing with scattered injuries the past two years, Gilmore has been selected to the last four Pro Bowls. Even that doesn't come close to showing his real value.
Here's some better context. Despite being truly dominant for much of the 2019 season, the vaunted San Francisco defense fell off a bit at the end, just missing out on some historic defensive numbers. All in all, though, it turned out to be a pretty effective year. In fact, there was just one team that ended up exceeding them in total defense: the New England Patriots, led by their six interceptions, 50.5 completion percentage, 44.1 allowed passer rating Defensive Player of the Year, Stephon Gilmore.
While the 49ers' brass is insistent on building their team through the defensive line, the 2019 seasons of two teams on opposite ends of the nation both proved one thing; it takes high-end cornerback play to take your team from good to dominant. The 49ers lacked that last year, and it ultimately showed even after a strong rebound. Thomas and Moseley probably aren't enough by themselves to handle the kinds of quarterback-receiver tandems you'll find deep in the playoffs. But with Gilmore in the mix, the 49ers' crafty, powerful defensive line and rock-solid linebacker corps become amplified. Gilmore's arrival would immediately vault the 49ers defense into a top-tier one, and best of all, it would make sense from a roster-building perspective.
Gilmore's market value, per OverTheCap, is a two-year contract at $14 million AAV (average annual value). But here, his recent injury history could work in the Niners' favor. Despite maintaining a solid availability history, as Gilmore started at least 11 games every year except last, recent injuries tend to depress the market on older players, especially those at skill positions. This opens up the possibility of an incentive-laden contract, in which Gilmore would be heavily rewarded for achievable milestones without said rewards counting against the 49ers' salary cap. It's not unthinkable that the 49ers could get a Pro Bowl-caliber cornerback for $5-6 million this way, which would go a long way towards securing depth across the rest of the roster. And the knock-on effects he has on the rest of the roster could go a long way.
San Francisco already has a young corps of secondary players, and they may invest further in the 2022 draft with a bevy of picks to bolster the position further. Having a top-flight player at that position to mentor those players and eventually leave them ready to make their own marks as high-end boundary cornerbacks would set the 49ers up nicely with a succession plan at that position. Continuity in the NFL is rare, so having the opportunity to create a steady cycle at a premium position like this would be a tremendous boon to San Francisco.
As with any free agent, and any player in as violent and volatile a sport as football, there are inherent risks. The age of 30 isn't a magic number at which point all athletes' limbs turn into spare parts and loose bolts, but their declines can be sharp and difficult to predict. It's not unlikely that on a three-year contract for Gilmore, at least one of them will be mostly scuttled by injury. Can the 49ers deal with that if they're carrying a cap hit of more than $10 million for him that year? Similarly, Gilmore may be looking for a massive payday before he hits his mid-30s. If another team offers him four years for $60 million with half that guaranteed, can the Niners match that? Should they?
The big concern with Gilmore is how he impacts the Niners' ability to also insulate them from injury. San Francisco has a lot of pending free agents, and we have yet to see how they'll approach maintaining their depth at cornerback. If the choice is between "Moseley/Thomas and three draft picks" versus "Gilmore/Moseley/Thomas and two draft picks," then I'm on the Gilmore train all the way. If the choice is between "Gilmore/Moseley/Thomas/We'll poke around the UDFA pile and see what's what" versus "Moseley/Thomas AND draft picks AND a cheaper, sneaky-value free-agent cornerback," that's a different conversation. Without knowing what the front office is thinking, it's hard to say that one would definitively be worse than the other.
But even with the lingering concerns, it should be clear that having Gilmore on the roster would be a tremendous asset. If he provides value in terms of a minimal salary cap hit, even better. That could be the difference between an NFC Championship appearance and a Lombardi trophy. The best-case scenario would be one that's been lurking in the background this entire time—a redux of the Richard Sherman experience in San Francisco.
The similarities between Sherman's situation in 2018 and Gilmore's current one are eerie. Sherman was coming off a devastating injury and bet on himself with a three-year contract with only $7 million guaranteed. But he earned the incentives he bargained for and more, earning an All-Pro accolade in 2019. Sherman's leadership, guidance, and tremendous play helped turn around a 49ers team that set an NFL record for fewest team interceptions in 2018 to an almost historically dominant one in 2019. But injuries mostly washed out Sherman's 2020 campaign, and he hasn't been a prime player since.
Still, a contract as brief and volatile as that would mark a significant success for San Francisco. If Gilmore can replicate Sherman's impact during his 49ers tenure, it would go a long way towards capitalizing on San Francisco's championship window. If the 49ers believe that Gilmore would struggle with injury, or if he'd simply be unwilling to take a less flexible deal than the 49ers would want to offer, then perhaps Gilmore to the Bay Area was never meant to be. But the potential of a game-changing cornerback that fills the last hole in an already good defense is too tantalizing to ignore.
Ultimately, when it comes to free agency, the best players to pay for are the ones you'd want on the field at the end of the game. The kind of players who can close things out in the last two minutes. The finishers. Gilmore is that player. 49ers fans can only hope he'll finish games with them.