So much has gone wrong for the 49ers’ defense over the last few weeks, it’s difficult to know where to start making corrections.
They need to rev up the pass rush — the acquisition of Chase Young is aimed at doing that. They need to stop calling such plain and predictable plays, which could be helped by film study over the bye.
But perhaps this defense’s biggest issue heading into the second half of the season is that it has lost its swagger.
And I don’t think defensive coordinator Steve Wilks moving from the coaches’ booth to the sideline is going to help with this.
A little film study of my own shows a defense that is devoid of juice.
The Niners’ defensive personnel is arguably better than last season. And yet they look to be a shell of that former team.
Like a balloon without air, this Niners’ defense looks limp.
Someone needs to pump them up.
The NFL is a billion-dollar business with innovative coaches, but it’s still a simple game in which padded men run into each other at full speed, and defensive players supply the force that makes it a full-contact sport.
And as I watch the 49ers over the last few weeks — the three consecutive losses looming largest — I don’t see a unit eager to go out and inflict pain.
More importantly, I don’t see anyone on the sidelines who can create that kind of energy.
Head coach Kyle Shanahan is one of the best offensive playcallers in the game and has shown he can run an effective operation in Santa Clara.
But he is not a rah-rah guy. Sure, he’ll lean into refs, the media, and NFL Players Association player directors, but it is rare to see Shanahan unloading on a player on the sideline. I can think of only one time he did it with Jimmy Garoppolo.
Shanahan is more of the passive-aggressive type — if Brock Purdy throws a bad interception, Shanahan is liable to avoid eye contact with him as he comes off the field.
It isn’t a question of right or wrong. He’s just a thinker, not a yeller.
The Niners’ head coach is also so focused on offense that he delegates nearly all of the defensive responsibilities to his defensive coordinator.
They run their team, Shanahan runs his.
And Shanahan did something quite self-aware when he hired his first defensive coordinator, Robert Saleh: He hired a rah-rah man.
Saleh is a smart guy — you weren’t going to beat him tactically — but unlike Shanahan, he is a yeller.
His emotions were external. He was perpetually liable to bash his head open by headbutting a helmeted player.
Saleh even had a motto for his high-intensity temperament: All Gas, No Brakes.
He brought the juice to his defense, which brought juice to the whole team.
And when Saleh left to become head coach of the Jets, Shanahan promoted linebackers coach DeMeco Ryans to defensive coordinator.
Being a former NFL linebacker, Ryans knew what players needed to be at their best.
A strong game plan was part of that package, no doubt.
But being an energetic force on the sideline was just as important.
He made sure his guys were so fired up, they couldn’t think on the field.
“We allow our guys just to go and shoot your gun,” Ryans used to say. “Nobody’s hesitating.”
Both Saleh and Ryans were so amped up they required “get-back” guys on the sideline during games, responsible for ensuring they didn’t run onto the field.
Now Wilks needs a get-down coach — as in Shanahan had to tell him to get down to the sidelines following this bye.
Wilks will organize the defense. He’ll be a positive influence. It made him a great interim head coach.
But Wilks will never need a get-back coach. If you’ve watched his press conferences, you get it.
Wilks was the defensive coordinator at my alma mater — Mizzou — in 2021.
An NFL head coach coordinating a college defense? Sounded like a big win.
The Tigers finished with the 113th-ranked defense in the country. It wasn’t for lack of talent, either.
It turns out that the kids didn’t need high-level instruction — they needed someone to convince them to run into another guy. They needed to think less and hit more.
It’s not Wilks’ fault this Niners’ defense is juice-free — it’s Shanahan’s. He failed to recognize what made Saleh and Ryans great. He failed to understand the necessary formula for success on that side of the ball for this team.
He hired someone like him. That was never going to work.
Like Shanahan, Wilks is an intellectual. A football tactician. A professor. He’s a thinker, not a yeller.
And while I’m sure that made the interview process enjoyable, the fact is that thinking on the field is death to a defense, even at the NFL level.
There’s a weekday temperament — studious, curious, cerebral — and a Sunday temperament — go break bones.
Wilks does not have that Sunday mode and halfway through the season, it’s rubbing off on his defenders.
Think about all the cutaways television broadcasts make to the coaches’ booth during a game. Have you ever seen a lick of emotion from Wilks when he’s on camera? No. That’s not his style.
Why would that change if he moved to the sideline?
(Juxtapose that with Dallas defensive coordinator Dan Quinn. He’s in the booth, but you often see him standing — he’s living and dying with every play. Is it any surprise his defense is as kinetic as any in the NFL?)
Wilks wants a birds-eye view of the action. He’s a secondary-first coordinator and the All-22 provides far more information in that regard.
But more information isn’t what this defense needs.
It needs someone to convince it to run through the brick wall again and again and again.
And that’s not Wilks. It never will be.
So where can the Niners’ defense find that charge?
Here’s an outside-the-box idea — literally.
Niners general manager John Lynch was one of the toughest dudes of the NFL’s modern era — a human torpedo coming in from the secondary.
He’s in this job and not broadcasting because he loves being part of a team. He needs the action.
Sitting in a luxury box for most of the game, he looks forlorn.
I can’t think of a better person to charge up this defense.
The Niners cannot win if “limp” is the team’s new defensive identity.
It’s time for Lynch to take off the suit, get into some logo-laden Nike apparel, and start dishing out headbutts.
