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The 49ers Defensive Backs Have Zero Interceptions Through Five Games

What's going on?

Grant Cohn

Oct 6, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers safety Ji'Ayir Brown (27) after the game against the Arizona Cardinals at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kelley L Cox-Imagn Images
Oct 6, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers safety Ji'Ayir Brown (27) after the game against the Arizona Cardinals at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kelley L Cox-Imagn Images / Kelley L Cox-Imagn Images
In this story:

Something is seriously wrong with the 49ers defense.

Last season, their defensive backs intercepted a whopping 16 passes in 17 regular season games. This season, they have intercepted a grand total of zero through five games, and most of their starters have returned.

What's going on?

Charvarius Ward, Deommodore Lenoir and Ji'Ayir Brown all were legitimate playmakers last season. Combined, they intercepted 10 passes. Now they all have intercepted none.

"We’ve got to attack it more," defensive coordinator Nick Sorensen said on Tuesday. "I mean, there's always ops. It's just one of those things where we need a mindset of when it's up, it's ours. Be the receiver, be the aggressor. Just hasn't happened yet. We need to be more aggressive with it."

TRANSLATION: The players have to play better. Sorensen is putting them in positions to make plays, they simply aren't making them because they're not being aggressive enough. Suddenly, a defensive backfield that was among the most aggressive in the NFL at forcing turnovers turned passive overnight.

Sure, Nick.

I have an alternate interpretation: Sorensen is failing. It's his first season as a defensive coordinator and teams are eating his lunch. He is not putting his defensive backs in position to make plays because he's not disguising coverages. Other teams know what the 49ers are doing on defense before they do it. That's why they've lost to two teams that have terrible offenses -- the Rams and the Cardinals.

Sorensen better find some answers quick, or he'll be the first one gone.

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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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