Why the 49ers Run Defense Has Gotten Worse

Last season, it allowed just 3.4 yards per carry -- second best in the NFL. That's when DeMeco Ryans was the defensive coordinator and Samson Ebukam was the starting defensive end opposite Nick Bosa.

Grant Cohn | Oct 16, 2023

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San Francisco 49ers

The Browns exposed the 49ers run defense on Sunday.

The 49ers gave up 160 rushing yards -- so uncharacteristic of them. And now, the 49ers' run defense is giving up 4.0 yards per carry, which ranks 15th out of 32 teams. Which means their run defense is ordinary. Last season, it allowed just 3.4 yards per carry -- second best in the NFL. That's when DeMeco Ryans was the defensive coordinator and Samson Ebukam was the starting defensive end opposite Nick Bosa.

Now, Steve Wilks is the defensive coordinator, and Clelin Ferrell is Bosa's bookend. And the run defense has taken a hit.

"I was disappointed in it," Shanahan said on a Monday conference call. "If I had to guess, it was our most missed tackles on the year. I thought they got our edges way too much, just blocking down our D-ends and getting around. We played a lot more two-shell defense and when you play that, you're a little bit behind in the run game, but we've been able to stop guys pretty good that way, and when they got our ends and we weren't getting our safeties downhill, they bled us out too much. When you add on those missed tackles, it was way too much, especially when you have a quarterback coming in who hasn't started yet. The best way to make that guy uncomfortable is to take away the run game. With 160 yards allowed, we obviously didn't, and that was disappointing, especially on the last two drives."

Translation: Bosa, Ferrell, Drake Jackson and Randy Gregory -- the defensive ends -- did a poor job of setting the edges, and the Browns took advantage.

In addition, the 49ers missed Dre Greenlaw. He is the tone-setter on their defense, their hardest hitter by far. Without him, their defense is finesse.

Greenlaw should return this week.

Published Oct 16, 2023

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.