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Kyle Shanahan Explains Why the 49ers Run Defense is So Bad this Season

Two years ago, the 49ers had the no. 1 run defense in the league. Now it stinks.

Grant Cohn

San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan argues with a referee after a penalty was called against the 49ers during a game against the Green Bay Packers on Sunday, November 24, 2024, at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wis. The Packers won the game, 38-10. Tork Mason/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin
San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan argues with a referee after a penalty was called against the 49ers during a game against the Green Bay Packers on Sunday, November 24, 2024, at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wis. The Packers won the game, 38-10. Tork Mason/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin / Tork Mason / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
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Two years ago, the 49ers had the no. 1 run defense in the league. Now it stinks.

Through 13 weeks, the 49ers run defense has given up 4.4 yards per carry, which ranks 19th out of 32 teams. In addition, the 49ers have allowed a whopping 19 rushing touchdowns -- second most in the league. Terrible.

Why is the run defense so bad?

“When you ask why, we can go into a ton of things," head coach Kyle Shanahan said on Wednesday. "But the bottom line is we haven't played good enough run defense. You look at all of our losses, these last two weeks have been as bad as it gets. Especially when you give up the run game like we have in these last two weeks in the first half, the game's almost over before it starts going into that second half. I still thought we had every chance to make it a game in the second half, but that's when we had our three turnovers in both games, which leads to blowouts. If you look at all of our losses this year, I think the least amount of yards we’ve given up in a loss is close to 150. So we haven't been stopping the run well enough. That starts with people being out of gaps. It can go to missed tackles, it can go to not getting off the field on third-down so they get a few more runs called. It can go to not getting enough turnovers and it can go to missed assignments. So it's all above.”

It sounds like Kyle Shanahan is blaming the players' lack of execution, not the play calling of rookie defensive coordinator Nick Sorensen.

Shanahan seems a little too eager to blame his players for this season.

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Grant Cohn
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.

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