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It’s been a long time since the 49ers have fielded a good run defense, which is ironic considering this team’s proud approach to that facet of the game.
“You’re not going to have success running the ball,” former 49ers safety Tashaun Gipson Sr. boasted after an early 2023 win. “Not against this defense.”
At the time, the 49ers were coming off consecutive finishes — in 2021 and 2022 — as the NFL’s No. 2 run defense (measured by expected points added per play). They hadn’t finished outside the top-seven since 2018, the year before star edge rusher Nick Bosa arrived to spearhead a total defensive transformation.
So the unit’s early-2023 confidence made perfect sense. But that bravado made the season’s subsequent collapse all the more confounding. The 2023 49ers finished all the way down at No. 26 against the run and even provided teach tape of how not to play defense with an infamous low-effort play in the NFC Championship Game.
Ultimately, the 49ers made the Super Bowl despite, certainly not because of, their poor run defense — a distinction that was undoubtedly relevant when it came to the firing of 2023 defensive coordinator Steve Wilks. Then, when the 49ers’ run defense tumbled even farther in 2024 — to No. 29 — it doomed Wilks’ successor, Nick Sorensen.
Defensive coordinators: Saleh for 2019-20, DeMeco Ryans for 2021-22, Wilks for 2023, and Sorensen for 2024.
“Embarrassment,” Bosa said following 2024’s final game, in which the 49ers allowed 47 points and 151 rushing yards. “It doesn’t feel good. It’s hard to look the guys in their faces as the leader of this team when that’s the product we kept putting out there game after game. It’s pretty embarrassing.”
Nothing is more personal to the sport’s defensive blue bloods than run defense. That’s partly because it’s impossible to win consistently without at least a semblance of effectiveness in that regard; a team’s other strengths become irrelevant if the opposition can just nullify them by controlling game flow on the ground. But it’s mostly because stopping the run demands a dose of old-school football mentality; brute strength and physical toughness remain requirements even if much of the sport has trended toward the speed and finesse necessary for executing and combating the pass game.
Reenter Robert Saleh. At this time of dire need for the 49ers, it’s worth looking back at what the returning defensive coordinator said about run defense back when he was building the unit in 2017.
“The whole mindset of our scheme is to eliminate something first,” Saleh said. “Obviously, if you can stop the run, you can get after the passer. You try to get teams to be one-dimensional. So the first thing you do in the scheme is to stop the run. Everything is designed to stop the run.”
It should come as no surprise, then, that everything the 49ers did from a personnel standpoint with Saleh back aboard this offseason seemed at least accented toward stopping the run.
First, consider the cuts the 49ers made. The team in March released veteran defensive linemen Javon Hargrave, Maliek Collins, and Leonard Floyd. All rated as good pass rushers, which contributed to the confusion surrounding the logic of those moves.
But a look at the right-hand column of the table below contextualizes perhaps the largest part of the 49ers’ reset. Outside of Bosa, there’s only red — denoting below-average performance — in the column showing Pro Football Focus’ run defense grades for 2024.
Hargrave, Collins, and Floyd all scored as bad run defenders. All came with annual price tags of more than $10 million, and all contributed to a deficiency that Saleh cannot fundamentally work with.
The 49ers, in their process of getting younger, healthier, and hungrier up front, decided that they absolutely needed to clear the way for better run defenders.
And that’s where the 2025 NFL Draft, at which the 49ers spent their first five picks on defenders for the first time since 1981, entered the frame in a pointed manner.
Defensive line coach Kris Kocurek has called Mykel Williams, the 49ers’ first-round pick, the best edge setter in the 2025 draft class. There’s hope that Williams can give the 49ers a rigid run-stopping presence that they’ve struggled to find opposite Bosa ever since Clelin Ferrell went down with a season-ending injury in 2023.
The 49ers’ second-round pick, Texas defensive tackle Alfred Collins, boasts a wingspan of more than 7 feet. Saleh hopes Collins can use his length to keep blocking guards at bay in a manner evocative of former 49er DeForest Buckner, a similarly tall defensive tackle who commanded the 3-technique position during Saleh’s first run with the team.
“When he plays really violent, like he’s doing right now,” Texas coach Steve Sarkisian said of Collins last season, “he’s a real problem.”
Fellow defensive tackle C.J. West, the 49ers’ first fourth-round pick, helped transform Indiana’s run defense in 2024 during his one season at the school. PFF graded West at 88.1 against the run, and Indiana’s opponents seemed downright afraid to run against the Hoosiers with West spearheading some of the nation’s best run defense splits at the 1-technique.
Here's a fun CJ West stat for you.
— Brett Kollmann (@BrettKollmann) April 3, 2025
Indiana's average depth on tackle against A-gap runs last season was just 2.11 yards. The next closest team was 2.75.
Indiana faced only 85 such runs, which was 104th in the country, but had 29 TFLs or no gains. That was 4th-most!
CJ West.
“His ability to be able to strike and win contact and jolt that contact and control blockers with his hands, and then his ability to shed and escape blockers — as a young dude coming from college, it’s advanced for where he’s at this stage in his career,” Kocurek said of West. “It’s obviously something that really drew us to him.”
The 49ers picked linebacker Nick Martin and nickelback Upton Stout in the third round. It’s no accident that both were among the strongest players relative to their size in the 2025 draft class. Martin’s 26 bench-press reps at the NFL Scouting Combine were the most of any linebacker, while Stout’s 21 reps were the most of any defensive back.
The 49ers have been clearly focused on infusing the defense with heavy doses of strength and scrappiness that they believe will pair well with Saleh’s primary focus on stopping the run. They’ve also signed a safety in Jason Pinnock, who delivered good run defense under Saleh with the New York Jets. And they’ve even been sure to emphasize that trade acquisition Bryce Huff — a pass-rushing specialist — will be limited to that role and that role only.
It all adds up to this: Talk of stopping the run is far more than an undercurrent in the 49ers’ building. It’s an overt focus, a foundational pillar they haven’t been shy about.
“We want tough, dependable, fast, contagiously competitive, physical players,” general manager John Lynch said when highlighting the team’s scouting philosophy this offseason. “When you have someone who’s not a fit, it stands out.”
Similarly, a run defense that doesn’t live up to established performance standards becomes a visible outlier in a bad way. That’s what the 49ers have dealt with for two seasons now, and they’ve certainly strained to prevent bad news from coming in threes.
A verdict on the 49ers’ efforts will come this fall. It might be the single most meaningful variable to track in this team’s turnaround bid.