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Hutchinson: 10 questions that will define 49ers’ 2024 season (paywall)
“The Detroit Lions, amongst others, gapped this team into oblivion. Detroit – often running “duo” (a gap scheme inside run) and split zone run plays that utilized interior double teams before climbing to second-level blocks – ran the 49ers into the ground in the first half of the conference championship.
If Josh Reynolds caught a couple passes and Jared Goff was a little better than Jared Goff, the Lions would have (and should have) run away with things. The reason they were about to is because of the run game.
The 49ers, and their wide-nine scheme on the defensive line, are very susceptible to gap-oriented run games as well as screens. If they don’t have a defensive tackle capable of holding and occasionally splitting double teams, you get into a situation where the defensive ends are discarded, and interior offensive linemen can take their pick on how to get vertical. Arik Armstead, who is not a great run defender, held the 49ers’ run defense together.
Javon Hargrave is a below-average run defender. Jordan Elliott is huge, but deeply unreliable in the run game. His leverage is constantly used against him. The only nose tackle type the 49ers really had was Kalia Davis, and he’s out for at least the first four weeks.
The 49ers’ run game hopes may rely on the 29-year-old Maliek Collins. He graded out by Pro Football Focus as a terrible run defender on the season, but that doesn’t tell the full picture. Down the stretch, from Week 10 on, he was a plus run defender.
He can take on double teams and discard them, and he is a constant force in the pass game. San Francisco may have gotten a cheap upgrade at defensive tackle with him. But even as someone high on him (he was a menace against the Jets last year), the 49ers are betting quite a lot on a mostly pass-rush-oriented defensive tackle with eight years of mileage under his belt.”
“Collins, for example, is the 49ers’ resident spin-move king. It’s a maneuver he’s good at and one he used often against Puni in training camp. So when Puni’s New Orleans Saints opponent tried a spin move — “three or four times,” Puni recalled — in the second preseason game, Collins and the other defensive tackles knew Puni would be ready.
“We were kind of laughing on the sideline,” Hargrave said. “Because we knew he’d already seen that.”
Said Collins: “The guy gave him a spin and (Puni) was standing right there in front of him. I wouldn’t attribute it to me. But I know I’ve shown him a lot of spin moves. And I’d be mad at him if he let somebody win on a spin move.”
49ers’ Ricky Pearsall shows up at practice; Christian McCaffrey is limited (paywall)
“There were no visible signs he’d had a near-death experience — a bullet having passed through his right pectoral muscle and then out through his back — on Saturday afternoon. He flipped a football to himself the entire time and at one point made an underhand toss with his right hand to teammate Ronnie Bell.”
Kyle Shanahan recalls Ricky Pearsall shooting, discusses recovery as rookie watches on at practice
“Pearsall’s adrenaline was still running to the point that he told Shanahan, “I think I could still play versus the Jets.”
Shanahan said that call relieved a lot of anxieties. He had to let Pearsall know that the adrenaline would wear off and some of the reality would set in.
He pointed to the mental hurdles of the trauma Pearsall sustained, which might be more of a weight than the physical impediments he’ll face to return.
Shanahan said the instinct when you see someone after an incident is to ask what happened. That approach, though, can heighten the trauma. He said he told the team to avoid doing that with Pearsall.
“I told the team, everyone wants to show him they care, and so what do you do? You go up to someone, you ask them how it happened,” Shanahan said. “It’s a pretty traumatizing story. I told the team, we don’t want to make him relive that 80 times. So he knows how much everyone cares about him. He loves being around. It’s all up to him with that stuff. But everyone’s trying to give him space in that way and just let him work through this process, because the physical thing is one thing, but it’s a pretty big mental toll on someone, too.”
Brock Purdy is already really good. What if the 49ers QB is about to get even better? (paywall)
“His understanding of the playbook has really grown to where he can point out when other people make mistakes very quickly,” Juszczyk said. “In a situation on third down, I’m in protection in the backfield. He’ll let me know as soon as we get lined up, ‘Hey you’re going to be hot’ (a route run against a blitz). It’s little things like that where you can just tell he has full understanding of what’s going on there. It’s not just what he has to know. Now, he’s kind of understanding what everyone else has to know.”
Purdy has also formed what is now more of a partnership with Shanahan and Griese, who said the relationship was different when Purdy was a rookie because “he didn’t know what he didn’t know” as far as his play-call preferences.
Purdy now has input on game plans, telling Shanahan during the week what concepts he doesn’t feel comfortable with. On the night before games, Purdy lists his favorite plays on third down and in the red zone.
“And those are the plays he calls in those moments,” Purdy said. “So there is a big trust factor there. It has evolved over time. I’m still learning from him. And I know he’s such a great play-caller. I’m not like a bully telling him I don’t like this or I don’t like that, let’s not run it. Whatever he calls, I trust. And we roll with it.”
Griese observed, “There are also times when Brock doesn’t want to have input. He just wants to say, ‘Tell me how you want me to run this.’ And he has a great amount of trust in Kyle and the system. And on game day that’s what you really need.”
Branch: 49ers give Trent Williams payday banking on 36-year-old redefining what’s possible (paywall)
“Williams is aiming to go where no offensive tackle has gone before — and where few offensive linemen have ventured. Williams could become one of six offensive linemen to earn first-team All-Pro honors in a season which began when they were 36 or older. He would join Titans center Kevin Mawae (2008), Titans guard Bruce Matthews (1998-2000), St. Louis Cardinals guard Bob Young (1979), Browns center Frank Gatski (1955) and Eagles center Vic Lindskog (1951).
In all, not including quarterbacks or kickers, 12 players have been a first-team All-Pro at 36 or older.
“I just want to continue to knock barriers down,” Williams said. “I know at my age, there hasn’t been a lot of people to play at an All-Pro level outside of a quarterback. And I just want to continue to bust those barriers.”
“My vibe is I live in my world, so I just focus on me and my job and make sure I please my position coach,” Floyd said. “I have enough stress with that, so I don’t think about other stuff.”
All-Pro left tackle Trent Williams was on the practice field Tuesday morning for the first time after he and the 49ers reached an agreement on a revised contract. Williams’ holdout is over, and that is good news to Floyd and everyone else around the team.
Now, Floyd can work against and with Williams as teammates.
“I played Trent when I was with the [Los Angeles] Rams,” he said. “It’ll be great going against a great athlete like him every day at practice. I look forward to it.”
49ers practice and media schedule leading to Week 1 matchup vs. Jets
“Below is the schedule for the upcoming week. All times are Pacific. The schedule is subject to change.”
What we’re seeing from San Francisco 49ers: Brock Purdy airing it out, other observations (paywall)
“Camp provided several clues the 49ers’ passing rate might increase this season. The biggest sign came in last season’s playoffs, when coach Kyle Shanahan called 109 pass plays and only 77 run plays — an inversion of the 49ers’ run-majority division in the regular season. (It’s worth noting that the 17-point deficit against the Detroit Lions in the NFC Championship Game didn’t cause the 49ers to go pass happy — their run-pass ratio while making up the deficit in the third quarter of that game was essentially even.) Over August, we saw the 49ers employ some aggressive passing sets. One came in the preseason finale against the Las Vegas Raiders, when the 49ers emptied the backfield and split running back Jordan Mason out wide. They’d gone empty in key situations at camp, too.”
Kawakami: On the eve of Week 1, the 49ers emerge from a summer of crises (paywall)
“Then came news from ESPN on Wednesday afternoon that the 49ers had restructured Deebo Samuel’s deal to create cap space for this season but also almost certainly will add to the cost of potentially moving on from him after this season. That 2025 exit had been widely presumed, especially with the understanding that Aiyuk was about to make big money. Most teams don’t like their salary cap to become unbalanced by keeping two expensive receivers. And the 49ers will almost certainly be paying Purdy a monster deal next offseason. But Deebo also has looked great all summer.
Is this a 49ers commitment to seriously consider paying both expensive receivers for the long term? Are they planning to keep everybody together for years? Has this challenging period changed the entire mood for weeks and maybe months to come?
We don’t know how long this kind of energy will last. We don’t even know if it will lead to victories. But for a long time this summer, the 49ers didn’t feel like the 49ers we’ve known and watched for the last several years. They felt diminished and diminishing. They must’ve understood that themselves. And on Wednesday, they were reunified and they were themselves again.”
“Will this team be as equipped to survive a crisis, or mini-crisis, as the S.F. ensembles that did so in each of the past three seasons?
If things start to unravel, will players press, point fingers, pull back, pout?
No one should dismiss these possibilities. Pro football success is too fleeting, the stress of the game too unremitting, to believe even a team as talented and grounded as the 49ers is impervious to peril.
And, yet, despite the bad omens, it doesn’t have to go down that way, either.
The 49ers have a brainy head coach whose gifts as an offensive strategist are unsurpassed. They have an alarmingly accurate, ascending quarterback in the process of asserting his leadership, a young man who dropped the mantra “bloody mindset” when I spoke to him at the start of training camp. “
What other ailment has kept 49ers’ Christian McCaffrey sidelined? (paywall)
“Shanahan said the Achilles issue wasn’t new and was part of McCaffrey’s initial calf injury. McCaffrey returned to practice Tuesday for the first time since Aug. 4.”
49ers’ Nick Bosa eyes return to peak form: ‘He’s going to be himself again’ (paywall)
“Bosa also sets the tone in other ways, to hear his teammates. He’s always led by example, diligent and exacting in his preparation. Armstead served as the more traditional leader of the defensive line, commanding respect with his words and how he carried himself.
Now, with Armstead gone, Bosa is spreading his wings.
“Nick kind of took over that role as the one who leads us and talks to us all the time,” defensive tackle Javon Hargrave said. “He’s more vocal in the room, on what we can work on and stuff like that. If he sees something I can work on, he comes up to me and talks about it.”
