Two years ago, the 49ers had the no. 1 run defense in the league. Now it stinks. Why is the run defense so bad?
Two years ago, the 49ers had the no. 1 run defense in the league. Now it stinks.
Through 13 weeks, the 49ers run defense has given up 4.4 yards per carry, which ranks 19th out of 32 teams. In addition, the 49ers have allowed a whopping 19 rushing touchdowns — second most in the league. Terrible.
Why is the run defense so bad?
“When you ask why, we can go into a ton of things,” head coach Kyle Shanahan said on Wednesday. “But the bottom line is we haven’t played good enough run defense. You look at all of our losses, these last two weeks have been as bad as it gets. Especially when you give up the run game like we have in these last two weeks in the first half, the game’s almost over before it starts going into that second half. I still thought we had every chance to make it a game in the second half, but that’s when we had our three turnovers in both games, which leads to blowouts. If you look at all of our losses this year, I think the least amount of yards we’ve given up in a loss is close to 150. So we haven’t been stopping the run well enough. That starts with people being out of gaps. It can go to missed tackles, it can go to not getting off the field on third-down so they get a few more runs called. It can go to not getting enough turnovers and it can go to missed assignments. So it’s all above.”
It sounds like Kyle Shanahan is blaming the players’ lack of execution, not the play calling of rookie defensive coordinator Nick Sorensen.
Shanahan seems a little too eager to blame his players for this season.