The San Francisco 49ers have been trying to figure things out at safety all season. They have mainly relied on four different players, but rookie Marques Sigle has seen a steep fall from grace as the season has dragged on.
It was a bit of a surprise when Sigle got the starting job in Week 1 against the Seattle Seahawks. He looked solid in training camp and preseason action, which gave him a leg up over embatted third-year player Ji'Ayir Brown.
However, as the season has gone on, Sigle has seen his playing time drop precipitously. The fifth-round draft pick out of Kansas State played all of the team's defensive stats in the first five weeks of the season but saw his share of defensive snaps drop to 60 percent in Week 6 and then 31 percent in Week 7.
That share dropped to zero in Week 8 against the Houston Texans, which is a fairly staggering fall for the rookie.
Part of why he has seen his playing time drop so much is because of the return of Malik Mustapha. The hard-hitting second-year safety missed the first five weeks of the year as he recovered from an ACL injury. He showed enough promise in his rookie season that the Niners are going to have him out there if he is healthy.
However, the safety they pair with him seems to be Brown for the time being as the duo were out there for 80 defensive snaps against the Texans, while veteran Jason Pinnock, who began the season as a starter alongside Sigle, got just two snaps.
Brown seems to have earned his way back into the good graces of the coaching staff. Getting passed over in favor of Sigle seemed like it could have sealed his fate with the Niners, but defensive coordinator Robert Saleh utilizing him in the "big nickel" role got him back on track as he has seemed to play with more confidence since then.
Sigle is not completely doomed by any means. He is still a rookie and was thrust into tough circumstances starting as a rookie, which is always going to come with growing pains.
He can definitely earn his way back into the rotation because the Mustapha-Brown tandem has not looked all that formidable, and the Niners have struggled to create turnovers this season. They just got their first interception of the season in Week 8, so the secondary has to do a better job of creating turnovers, especially with how decimated the rest of the defense has been by injuries.
Sigle's fall from grace has been fast, but he still has time to turn things around the rest of this season.