There were times last year where I felt like I was banging my head against a brick wall.
Yes, the San Francisco 49ers lacked Nick Bosa from very early in the season. And they certainly missed Fred Warner after that. But good god, that defensive unit was bad. It wasn't so much that I didn't account for the missing players (you don't expect All-Pro play from people off the street), but it was just infuriating to watch passive defense do very little when it really mattered.
In fairness, I was a little biased. I've never been a huge fan of Robert Saleh, even when the whole system is firing—I wrote cautionary tales on rehiring him—and everything I thought would occur when he came back, did. That includes, to be fair, a defensive improvement. No one can be worse than Nick Sorensen, after all.
But it was the direction and ethos I never liked: bend but don't break. Give up on having any pass rush if your top players are out injured. And never, ever, take risks.
So, I wasn't exactly sad when Saleh was hired for the Tennessee Titans job in the offseason. I saw it as a great chance to reset a stale, dying scheme and get the best out of some young players who seemed neutered by it, especially in the defensive backfield.
Enter Raheem Morris, and I'm pleased to report, I was right:
"This could actually be a very sensible hire. Morris is very much in the Saleh mold as a fiery players coach, while schematically he's close enough to Saleh for the shift not to seem too jarring. He's produced some very good defensive units, albeit his best contained the likes of Aaron Donald, but he was also integral in the 2023 Rams defense, which implemented a lot of younger players but did a great job in developing them."
This has proven to be true, and it was looking good all offseason. We've seen young players like Gracen Halton and Jaden Dugger step up, while others like Upton Stout and Renardo Green look revitalised and taking a step towards being some of the top players at their position in the league.
Even the ever-excellent likes of Fred Warner and Dre Greenlaw look to have found some bounce in their step since Morris took over. It's a real nice thing to see.
Perhaps 49ers are way better off with Raheem Morris than Robert Saleh
What's best, though, is that despite Morris also being without Bosa, it's not automatically meant he's thrown the towel in and given up on generating a pass rush, as Saleh did last year.
Instead, we've seen creative blitz packages with Greenlaw and Warner, among others, getting involved in pressuring the passer. In fact, Greenlaw had the most pressures of any Niner in Week 4's win over the Denver Broncos.
It's cool to see, and even though Morris doesn't exactly blitz at an incredible level (around 28 percent), it's still almost twice the level that Saleh ever did.
It's exactly the attitude the 49ers need.
For too long, San Francisco's defense has played to not lose games, including the two Super Bowl appearances in the Kyle Shanahan era, and it's never worked. This defense is looking to take games away from its opponents, not merely prevent it from slipping away.
A great example is Week 4's win. The offense took a while to fire, but rather than simply sit back and allow Broncos quarterback Bo Nix easy points, the defense came to take away momentum, which they eventually did. The Niners will need that exact same energy in the upcoming games, especially on the road against the Seattle Seahawks in Week 5.
In the midst of all the complaining about Shanahan's record against Mike Macdonald, everyone seems to have forgotten the only reason the roof fell in last season and resulted in a trip to Seattle in the first place was Saleh's defense's inability to stop offenses like the Jacksonville Jaguars and Houston Texans in earlier games.
I'm not ragging on Saleh. Well, not much. He has his place in 49ers history. But I long believed he could only generate pressure with an elite front four, and I believed he was holding other players back by putting them in a reactive rather than aggressive scheme.
It was time for a change, an evolution, that kept the Niners near the top of the league.
So far, Morris is proving that spot on. The defense is third best in points allowed, seventh best in yards, and they might begin to get better from here, especially with some of the bigger guns coming back.
Keep going, Coach Morris.
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