A feud between 49ers defensive tackle Javon Kinlaw and longtime Bay Area sportswriter Grant Cohn melted down in spectacular fashion on Tuesday when Kinlaw confronted Cohn at practice and later berated him on the writer’s livestream.
Cohn, a second-generation team gadfly who now writes about the 49ers for a Sports Illustrated blog, has derided Kinlaw as an injury-prone bust almost since his 2020 call-up. According to Cohn, Kinlaw stared him down at Niner’s OTAs in Santa Clara on Tuesday. As Cohn said with a big grin on his faceHe responded by asking Kinlaw, “Why are you looking at me like that, Javon?”
At this point, Kinlaw apparently decided he’d heard enough. Kinlaw reportedly responded by calling him a “bitch-ass” N-word and ripping his hat off his head, according to Cohn. AP writer Josh Dubow, who was there, confirmed Cohn’s account.
In a video summarizing the initial confrontation with Kinlaw, Cohn openly admitted that he said: “A hundred negative things‘ about Kinlaw, including saying he has an ’80 year old knee’. But when Kinlaw appeared on his stream hours later, Cohn pretended not to know why the player was pissed. That’s the difference between Cohn and the real Jim Rome trolls: he couldn’t keep his story straight.
Kinlaw ended up jumping on Cohn’s evening stream – during the meal – and that’s when things got really wild. “Think you’re representing the 49ers well right now?” Cohn kept smacking his lips. “Do you think the 49ers are proud of what you’re saying?” Kinlaw responded by clipping wrestling promos while dinner spilled out of his mouth.
Kinlaw more or less admitted that Cohn’s real-world version of events was correct. Added with a little color.
“When I nudged you in f—king persona, you f—king trembled like a coward, voice lighter than my f—king, baby, fam,” Kinlaw told Cohn. “What’s up with that?”
Cohn, who was in the safety of his home at the time, asked Kinlaw if he thought he was scared of the 6-5, 320-pound NFL player.
“I don’t give af—k if you are [scared] or not,” Kinlaw replied. “All I know is when I walked up to you your damn body temperature was freezing… your damn balls were shriveled up, little dick [N-word].” (The size of Cohn’s genitals was a theme Kinlaw revisited frequently on the stream.)
Bruhhhh I’m dead 😭😭 pic.twitter.com/0Z74ODSpej
— chan0.eth (@chanodesigns) May 25, 2022
Omg what just happened. Kinlaw joined @grantcohn in his broadcast. Never seen before in my life 😭 pic.twitter.com/j87P0ytoiG
— chan0.eth (@chanodesigns) May 25, 2022
Amid all the insistence that “my nuts are bigger than yours,” Kinlaw had a fair point. “Stop talking about me like I’m an animal or something,” Kinlaw Cohn pleaded. “No one fucks with you. … You need to find a new job.”
For his part, when he didn’t whine about it, allegedly “threatened‘ Cohn reveled in the attention.
“Javon Kinlaw called me a ‘Sucka Ass Bitch’ today. You can’t tell. For me, it was one of the better days of my life.” said Cohn. “Definitely one of the better days of my career. I’m honored that Javon Kinlaw thinks I’m a motherfucker. I have worked so hard in my life to achieve this status. Thank you Javon.”
Later in the stream, Cohn admitted that he was thrilled to have made Kinlaw so angry and learned his tricks as Legacy Blowhard.
“My father was in the industry,” Cohn said of his father, Lowell Cohn, a notorious longtime columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle and Santa Rosa Press Democrat who, among other things, once compared PED users to murderers. “He put me in the game when I was very young. Because when [Kinlaw] touched me when he squeezed me dude…I might retire today. That’s what went through my head: Thanks to Javon Kinlaw, I’ll soon be a multi-millionaire.”
Niner’s defensive end Arik Armstead, who has had enough of the younger Cohn since he worked at his father’s newspaper, shared this part of the livestream in disgust. “That’s the kind of low life we let in our building,” Armstead said wrote on Tuesday evening. “He’d rather piss off and provoke players into hitting him so he can retire than doing his ‘job’ of journalism.” Long snapper Taybor Pepper said Cohn’s letter was “S—tPosting with little effort”. (Several NFL players on other teams, including a longtime 49er, I Agree.)
Deebo Samuel wrote on Instagram that he blocked Cohn, while another 49er, Brandon Aiyuk, pointed out Cohn’s cowardice in handling the whole thing. “If you leave, say something about someone who is on this s–t,” Aiyuk wrote. “Don’t step back and start playing victim.”
The 49ers and Cohn did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday, although Cohn spent most of the morning complaining in a Twitter space.