Ford, Bosa give San Francisco an edge
Addition of two stud rushers turned D-line into championship-caliber unit
SANTA CLARA >> There’s no official day to commemorate the birth of an elite 49ers defensive line, in part because there are two moments in time the team can consider transformational.
One took place March 12, 2019, and the other six weeks later, on April 25.
Those are the dates the 49ers traded for pass-rushing specialist Dee Ford and drafted Rookie of the Year candidate Nick Bosa. A defensive front that had struggled to strike gold in recent years suddenly found itself with two elite players who know how and where to dig.
“It’s hard for an offensive coordinator to slide the line in a certain direction because you’ve got two really talented guys on both edges,” defensive tackle DeForest Buckner said. “You can’t pick and choose really.”
Ford spent five seasons terrorizing opponents with the Kansas City Chiefs before bringing his first-class speed to a 49ers’ front in need of a burner.
“It’s like a track meet, you hear the gun and he’s just taking off,” Buckner said. “It’s pretty impressive to see.”
Bosa played in just three games as a college junior last year before undergoing core muscle surgery and leaving Ohio State to declare for the draft. Despite concerns about Bosa’s health, the 49ers selected him with the No. 2 overall pick.
It didn’t take long to know they hit the jackpot.
“It was probably the first or second day on the practice field, honestly, in training camp,” veteran left tackle Joe Staley said. “Typically, there’s some kind of, I don’t know if it’s evolution or whatever, but getting used to the NFL style of play and realizing that you can’t just win with athleticism and understanding blocking schemes and hand usage and all the different nuances that go into rushing a passer in the NFL. He had that down.”
The 49ers’ top pass-rushers have played pivotal roles in taking a four-win team in 2018 to the brink of a Super Bowl this year. Ford and Bosa each possess rare traits that would make them standouts in any defense, but together, the duo twists offensive tackles around like pretzels and crunches quarterbacks like potato chips.
“Having Dee is a mismatch for just about anybody, which opens up things for the other guys and everybody reaped the benefits,” Bosa said.
Every member of the 49ers’ defense benefits from the tandem of skilled sack artists. Cornerbacks and safeties spend less time in coverage while linebackers have clearer lanes to fill on run plays as offensive linemen lose ground at the line of scrimmage.
It’s possible no players have enjoyed the additions to the defense more than Buckner and fellow defensive tackle Arik Armstead, the 49ers’ regular season sack leader and a soonto-be free agent.
“When you’re looking at Buck and Armstead, who are just massive human beings, who are more power-rushers, the more space the better,” defensive coordinator Robert Saleh said. “When Bosa and Ford can create all that space for those guys, it just makes those guys even better on the inside.”
The seventh overall pick by San Francisco in the 2016 NFL Draft, Buckner finished last season as the hardest lineman to block on a team that went 4-12. This year, Buckner might be the third or fourth-most feared player on the team’s defensive line, yet ended the season by earning Second Team All-Pro honors.
Armstead, the 17th overall selection in the 2015 draft, entered the year with questions about his durability and overall fit on the 49ers’ front and ended the season with 10 sacks, one more than his combined total from his first four years in the NFL.
Outside of the trade for Ford and the selection of Bosa, there’s a third acquisition who has proven critical to the rise of the 49ers’ defensive line: assistant coach Kris Kocurek. Armed with a decade of experience coaching NFL defensive lines and a clear- cut approach to teaching, Kocurek has earned Saleh’s admiration for unlocking the unit’s potential.
“Kocurek has a very specific way he teaches that clears up all of the gray area,” Saleh said. “When you can put a player in the black and white, it allows them to go fast because they know what’s being asked of them.”
With a quartet of first-round talents starting along the defensive line, Saleh has the ability to be selectively creative. He can call traditional fronts and coverages and find success thanks to the immense pressure his unit puts on quarterbacks, or he can disguise the 49ers’ passrush and target mismatches that will allow his defense to blow up big plays before they happen.
In the 49ers’ 27-10 victory over the Vikings in Saturday’s Divisional Round playoff game, Saleh lined Ford and Bosa up alongside each other and caused havoc for an overwhelmed Minnesota offense.
“It makes the O-line think,” Bosa said. “They usually know something is up and we can catch them off guard with some other things. The other side of the line has to deal with Buck and Armstead.”
Buckner’s ability to take on multiple interior offensive linemen at once frees up his teammates while Armstead’s ability to rush as both a defensive end and tackle gives the 49ers more freedom to rotate personnel and more physicality against the run.
“I take a lot of pride in being versatile and being able to play all over the line,” Armstead said. “I feel like that’s the way the NFL is moving.”
The former Oregon teammates were critical in helping the 49ers finish tied for fifth in the NFL with 48 sacks during the regular season, but the key to San Francisco’s overall success was having Ford on the field.
In the 10 games San Francisco played before Ford missed time due to a hamstring injury, the 49ers averaged 3.9 sacks per game and went 9-1. In the six games the 49ers played after Ford was hurt (he missed all but four snaps after Week 11), the 49ers averaged 1.5 sacks per game and went 4-2 with three of those victories coming in the final seconds of games.
“Dee Ford is explosive and knows how to get to the quarterback and the more out there, whether they get the stats or not, helps everyone else,” head coach Kyle Shanahan said.
Ford returned from injury against the Vikings and the numbers again revealed the impact his presence makes. With Ford in the lineup, the 49ers held Minnesota quarterback Kirk Cousins to nine completions on 14 attempts for 48 yards and one interception. With Ford on the sidelines, Cousins completed 12- of-15 passes for 124 yards and a touchdown.
“His presence alone, I feel like it scares offensive linemen,” Buckner said. “They kind of bail out of their technique and they’re so scared about his speed around the edge that they bail out of their set and just start backpedaling.”