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Nick Sorensen Explains Why the 49ers Struggle to Contain Mobile QBs

The 49ers struggle to contain mobile quarterbacks no matter who their defensive coordinator is.

Grant Cohn

May 10, 2024; Santa Clara, CA, USA; San Francisco 49ers defensive coordinator Nick Sorensen holds a press conference before the 49ers rookie minicamp at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, CA. Mandatory Credit: Robert Kupbens-Imagn Images
May 10, 2024; Santa Clara, CA, USA; San Francisco 49ers defensive coordinator Nick Sorensen holds a press conference before the 49ers rookie minicamp at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, CA. Mandatory Credit: Robert Kupbens-Imagn Images / Robert Kupbens-Imagn Images
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SANTA CLARA -- The 49ers struggle to contain mobile quarterbacks no matter who their defensive coordinator is.

They couldn't contain Russell Wilson for a decade and now they can't contain Patrick Mahomes. It seems the 49ers give up at least one back-breaking scramble every time they face a quarterback who can move.

This week, I asked defensive coordinator Nick Sorensen why that is.

“Yeah, that's tough," Sorensen said. "They're all a little bit different. Mahomes has his own style. He can almost go anywhere. Some people, some quarterbacks have a rhythm and tendencies, most of them. You never want to just rush past them. You want to, you'd like to get to the level of the quarterback and then you need to, sometimes, just power rush and go into him. It's not going to be 100-percent of the time and there are some guys that like to escape high, but he's got a unique ability. And that 33-yarder, it was classic him pumping down the field, getting the extra yards, skirting the sideline. Could we have been better on that? Yeah, there were little things that we could have done better and he made a heck of a play. That's Mahomes. I think we were talking about it last week, someone asked me how you simulate it. It's really hard because it's kind of something a little bit different every time because he is a ball player and makes plays and he made one there.”

It sounds like the defensive linemen are being greedy and selling out to get sacks and giving up gigantic escape lanes in the process.

It sounds like Sorensen's defense lacks discipline.

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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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