The story of the second day of 49ers OTAs wasn’t Trey Lance becoming QB1 before our eyes, or absent stars like Deebo Samuel and Nick Bosa, it was Grant Cohn and Javon Kinlaw. After an altercation at the facility and an ugly confrontation online, tensions were high. Yesterday Cohn said he thought the feud was over, but not in Kinlaw’s eyes.
“I’m sure a lot of you guys are wondering what’s going on between me and Javon Kinlaw after all of that stuff yesterday,” Cohn said on his YouTube channel, “I just want to say that Javon and I met up today at the 49ers’ facility. We hashed it out. He said everything he wanted to say. I listened. We shook hands, we squashed it. It’s over.
What I want to say is, I appreciate Javon Kinlaw for meeting me today and taking the time to tell me exactly how he felt. I respect him and I deeply appreciate John Lynch for facilitating it. It was all in his office. It was his idea. It was a very grown up thing that he did and I’m better for it. I hope we all feel that way. Anyway, it’s squashed, it’s over, it has a happy ending. Let’s move on.”
Unfortunately, someone might want to tell Grant that Kinlaw doesn’t see it that way. On Instagram, Javon wrote, “I shook your hand for my organization. Nowhere was anything squashed, and you know that. Stop cappin dog. I ain’t letting nun [sic] go. I do this for the REAL ONES. It’s bigger than me.”
John Lynch deserves some credit for getting the two people involved in a room to try and talk things out. Lynch’s experience as a player may have served him well in this situation. Come-to-Jesus meetings like that don’t magically fix everything, as Kinlaw’s comments make clear, but they do get things to a place where both sides can begin to move on and at least tolerate each other in the future.
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