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The Weakest Link on the 49ers Defense

If only the 49ers had addressed this position at the trade deadline.

Grant Cohn

In this story:

Until a few weeks ago, the 49ers defense had no weak links.

It had 11 quality starters. Every player on the field was dangerous. And so the 49ers had the No. 1 defense in the league.

Then Emmanuel Moseley tore his ACL in Charlotte.

The 49ers have suffered lots of injuries on defense this season, but Moseley is the only player so far who won't return this season. And he was playing extremely well before he went down -- he gave up just 5.9 yards per target and a passer rating of 66.9. With him and Charvarius Ward on the field, the 49ers could play aggressive, bump-and-run man-to-man coverage on the outside and force passes to go over the middle.

Not anymore.

Now the starting corners are Ward and Deommodore Lenoir. And teams can avoid Ward now, because they target Lenoir, who's the weakest link on the defense. He might as well have a giant green light over his head when he's on the field.

So far this season, Lenoir has given up 26 catches on 35 targets (74.3 percent), 8.7 yards per target and a passer rating of 100.4. To his credit, he hasn't given up a touchdown catch. but he also has broken up just one pass and intercepted none. He's playing extremely conservative, soft coverage, meaning he's trying to keep the wide receiver in front of him and not give up big plays. Instead, he's giving up lots of shorter catches and not putting up much resistance. He essentially is content to concede catches and make tackles. This will be a problem in the playoffs when the 49ers face offenses with serious firepower.

By then, the 49ers hope Jason Verrett will have returned from a torn ACL. And if he does, the 49ers once again will have no weak links, because Verrett is an excellent player. But he hasn't returned yet. He's still a giant question mark.

If only the 49ers had added a cornerback at the trade deadline. Oh well.

Published
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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