Expectations for DeMeco Ryans' First Season as 49ers Defensive Coordinator

He's in charge of the entire defense, and he takes over for Robert Saleh, who was the best defensive coordinator in the NFL.

Grant Cohn | Apr 9, 2021

We've talked quarterbacks almost non-stop since the 49ers traded up for the No. 3 pick, and for good reason. The quarterback the 49ers pick will have a gigantic impact on the outcome of the 49ers' 2021 season.

But there's someone else who's extremely important: first-year defensive coordinator DeMeco Ryans. He's in charge of the entire defense, and he takes over for Robert Saleh, who was the best defensive coordinator in the NFL.

Saleh learned on the job as the 49ers' DC the past four years and improved tremendously each season as the 49ers defense grew with him. He was an inexperienced linebackers coach who took over the worst defense in 49ers franchise history, so expectations for him were low at first.

Not the case the Ryans.

Ryans is an inexperienced former linebackers coach, like Saleh. But Ryans is taking over a defense that ranked top 5 in the NFL last season without Nick Bosa, and ranked No. 2 in the league the season before that when it had Bosa. Now Bosa is returning from a torn ACL, so the expectation is another elite defense.

Maybe we should temper our expectations.

Saleh was not a great defensive coordinator his first two seasons on the job. He showed promise, built a system and a culture, but his weekly game plans weren't particularly sophisticated, nor were his in-game adjustments. He perfected that part of his job in Years 3 and 4, when his game plans became effective and opponent-specific.

It's unfair to expect Ryans to coach any better than Saleh did at first. Unfair to expect expert-level plans and adjustments. Unfair to expect the defense to remain the same without a drop off.

And yet, those are his expectations. The 49ers are in win-now mode and they believe their Super Bowl window is still open for the time being. They cannot afford him to flounder.

Lots of pressure on the first-year defensive coordinator.

Published Apr 9, 2021

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.