Kyle Shanahan is going to have to hire another new defensive coordinator, isn’t he?
It sure seems like Raheem Morris won’t have to wait long for his next head-coaching opportunity if the 49ers’ defensive effort in their 27-7 win over the Rams was any sign of what’s to come.
Morris’ new-look unit made Matthew Stafford look discombobulated and left Sean McVay’s typically surgical attack asleep at the operating table in a way that few others have.
Two third-down conversions on nine tries. Fifteen total first downs. On three trips to the red zone, the Rams walked away empty-handed more times than not, including a goal-line stand that the 49ers followed by marching 99 yards down the field in the game’s defining sequence.
“This is a humbling day for us,” McVay said after it was over.
Not many defensive coordinators have made the Rams’ offensive maestro utter those words.
How much of Los Angeles’ haze can be chalked up to the almost 8,000-mile journey it made less than 48 hours earlier is impossible to know with any certainty. McVay and Stafford, for what it’s worth, downplayed the effects of whatever grogginess they felt.
But there’s no question Morris’ scheme was a big part of their offensive disorder.
That’s because nobody neutered last year’s MVP like that … besides Morris (who has the advantage of having gone head-to-head with McVay in practice every day as the Rams’ DC from 2021-23).
As the Falcons’ head coach last season, his defense accounted for three of Stafford’s eight interceptions all season in a Week 16 win. That was Stafford’s only game with more picks than touchdowns. And voila, in his next matchup with Morris, he did it again.
One of the new wrinkles Morris brought to the 49ers’ defense was his tendency to disguise coverages. Clearly, that has caused trouble for even the game’s most cerebral quarterbacks.
Morris’ background is in the secondary, and after what they did to Stafford, the 49ers’ DBs must be salivating at the thought of playing Malik Willis and Jacoby Brissett the next two weeks.
Last season, under Robert Saleh, the 49ers yielded the eighth-most yards through the air — 232 per game. Stafford and the Rams led the league, averaging 268.
San Francisco contained him to 155 yards in the Week 1 win — Stafford’s fourth fewest in 75 games since joining forces with McVay. His 61.2 QB rating was his second lowest in a Rams uniform. It was pure dominance. And a complete 180 from last season.
There was only one word former cornerback Richard Sherman, who knows something about dominant defense, saw fit to describe the 49ers’ performance.
He said they “manhandled” them.
“The defense — big question mark all offseason — answered a lot of questions this game,” Sherman said on his eponymous podcast. “They looked like an entirely different unit.”
Morris, the Niners’ fifth defensive coordinator in as many years, has given their playbook on that side of the ball its biggest overhaul since Shanahan arrived in 2017. But that’s not the only thing that’s changed since the end of last season.
Of the 11 players who started on defense in their NFC divisional loss, only three reprised their roles in the season opener eight months later — cornerbacks Deommodore Lenoir and Renardo Green and safety Marques Sigle — while just two others (linebacker Garret Wallow and safety Malik Mustapha) are on the roster, at all.
The defense may have gotten a new face in Morris, but it got its heart and soul back with the returns of Nick Bosa, Fred Warner and Dre Greenlaw. The Niners had been without any of them since Week 6 of last season and hadn’t had all three together since 2024.
It sure felt like old times.
Bosa set the tone on the Rams’ first play from scrimmage, throwing Warren McClendon Jr. out of the way and rushing Stafford into an incompletion. The linebackers teamed up to force a fumble as Greenlaw brought Tyler Higbee to the ground and Warner punched the ball out. Green, who was benched in the elimination loss in Seattle, got redemption with an interception.
Did you even notice that San Francisco never actually recorded a sack?
The 49ers never quite got home on Stafford, but he was under constant duress in a dramatic change from last season. Although the Niners did nothing to improve on their 32nd-ranked sack total from a year ago, they hit Stafford eight times and recorded 14 pressures on 25 dropbacks.
That would amount to almost 14% of their total QB hits from last season, another category they ranked last in with 58. If they can repeat their performance against the Rams over the course of 17 games, they would finish the season with 136, which would have ranked second last year.
A team-high five pressures and four hits came from Osa Odighizuwa, who was acquired for the express purpose of improving the pass rush from the interior of the defensive line.
He might only be the second-best addition the 49ers made to their defense.
Expect other teams to start to take notice because, as Sherman said, “When you play defense like that, you ain’t gonna have Raheem Morris for long.”
