DC Ryans’ job is to keep elite Niners’ defense humming
The 49ers will enter training camp in four weeks with new coordinators on both sides of the ball.
Robert Saleh, the defensive coordinator the past three seasons, left to become head coach of the New York Jets and took the 49ers’ offensive coordinator, Mike LaFleur with him.
The offense will be fine; it belongs to Kyle Shanahan, anyway. But can the same be said of the 49ers’ defense without Robert Saleh?
And can this Niners’ team even sniff its goal of Super Bowl contention without an elite defense in 2021?
Yes, DeMeco Ryans inherited one of the best defenses in the NFL. The Niners backed up a fourth-place finish in weighted defensive DVOA rating in 2019 with a fifth-place finish last year.
The schedule, turnover luck, and the natural attrition that comes from playing without “brakes” makes defensive success difficult to replicate year-over-year, but the 49ers found a way to do it with Saleh at the helm.
It’s now Ryans’ job to keep it at that level.
The stakes couldn’t be higher for the first-time coordinator.
With Saleh’s inevitable exit, this offseason became all about continuity on defense for the 49ers. It stands to reason. So veteran free agents were re-signed in the secondary, the linebacker core will remain effectively the same year-over-year, and the defensive line will return Nick Bosa and fill roles that were effectively abandoned last season.
Player-wise, the Niners are set. The talent is there to be great again in ‘21. It’s logical to think that if the Niners could be a top defense last year, despite all their injuries, they should be markedly better this season.
The biggest difference will be the coordinator, even if he is a Saleh protege. As such, success or failure on defense will be viewed as a refer
endum on Ryans.
In many ways, he starts his career as a coordinator on the hot seat.
We won’t know what kind of appreciable changes the former NFL linebacker and Niners’ linebackers coach has made to San Francisco’s defensive scheme for a few months — organized team activities and mini-camps don’t provide that kind of insight. August’s training camp will provide some, as will the three-game preseason schedule, but it won’t be until September that we really find out how much Ryans has changed.
He has hinted there will be new “wrinkles” to the defense, but, along the theme of continuity, the idea is for the 49ers to run the same type of defense — “wide-nine” at the front, two safeties in the back — as in the last two seasons.
But remember, that wasn’t the same defense Saleh first employed with the Niners. In fact, Saleh was often viewed as a scapegoat for the Niners’ poor play in Kyle Shanahan’s first two seasons as head coach. His Cover-3 scheme, which Shanahan wanted and Saleh learned in Seattle, wasn’t working in a league where the rules were changing at a rapid-fire pace and the deep pass was becoming more commonplace. It also wasn’t best utilizing the Niners’ defensive personnel, which was admittedly underwhelming.
Saleh adjusted, though. The Niners added talent, changed their defensive tactics in the front and back ahead of 2019, and success was immediate.
It stuck around last year, too.
But it takes three years to determine if something is truly lasting.
Ryans is buttoned-up and affable, like Saleh. He was a leader as a player and beloved as a position coach. No one ever alleged that he was anything but a top-class professional during his 10year, Pro-Bowl career or since he’s come to the 49ers as a coach.
And that’s all well and good. Again, it’s a reason why he was promoted with a swiftness upon Saleh’s move east.
But is Ryans pragmatic?
If something is not broken, don’t fix it. But in a sport where men run into each other at full speed, how long until some fixing is needed on the defensive side?
Ryans said that he evaluated the entire 2020 season as a coordinator before he took the job, but the calls he’d make in hindsight are much easier to make than the ones he will have to make on the field come the fall.
It was Saleh’s pragmatism, paired with a tremendous improvement in player talent on the defensive side, that helped him keep his job in Santa Clara and then move into head coach conversation. Without him dropping the ideals of Cover-3 and embracing a new scheme — a bold, arguably ahead-of-it’s-time look that better utilized players like safety Jimmie Ward and linebacker Fred Warner, maximizing their talent and their teammates’ as well — Saleh is probably coaching linebackers or tight ends for another NFL team.
What happens when continuity is no longer the best policy?
Truth be told, we didn’t learn much during the OTAs. Trey Lance looked like a guy who should have been taken No. 3 overall. Javon Kinlaw is massive. The 49ers’ defense wants to play fast. None of this stuff is groundbreaking.
It’s impossible not to like Ryans. I’m rooting for him to succeed. It’s good to see good people rewarded when they work hard. Ryan fits the bill.
But I felt the same way about Saleh. Ultimately coaches aren’t judged by how impressive they are as a person or smart they are in a press conference, it’s how your team performs on Sundays.
Saleh made the adjustments. He was able to dig himself out of an early hole.
Ryans, meanwhile, starts with a team at the top. There’s far more room below him than above. There will be no delay on his referendum.