SANTA CLARA, Calif. — The short week began with San Francisco 49ers defensive coordinator Steve Wilks calling a meeting of the team’s defensive backs. His message was simple. The 49ers, after correcting some loose pass coverage issues around halftime during Sunday’s win over the Los Angeles Rams, would aggressively attack the New York Giants from the jump on the back end.
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“(Wilks) told us we’re playing a lot of man coverage,” 49ers safety Tashaun Gipson Sr. said after the 49ers whipped the Giants, 30-12. “That was the challenge for us on the back end in that meeting. And I think we answered that call — 137 yards passing.”
New York quarterback Daniel Jones managed a paltry 4.3 yards per attempt against mostly airtight coverage. Jones had tried to replicate the strategy employed by Rams’ quarterback Matthew Stafford on Sunday — a passing attack based on quick releases to combat the 49ers’ pass rush — but he failed to do so with any efficiency. The coverage was just too tight, and that set the table for a 49ers’ pass-rushing breakthrough a week after the team’s defensive linemen hadn’t notched a sack despite constantly pressuring Stafford.
Defensive end Nick Bosa notched his first sack of the season against the Giants. Defensive tackle Javon Hargrave, already the NFL leader among interior linemen in pass-rush wins, roared through for his second sack.
“I guess the DBs did a good job holding up and just gave me a chance,” Hargrave said.
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Said Gipson: “We let those guys hunt up front. Playing really soft in zones doesn’t give those guys time to get home. So we called more man than we have all year. I mean, third-and-12, we called man, so that’s a vote of confidence in us as a secondary. We want to let those guys do what they’re paid for — and every guy on the D-line earned their check today.”
Another related and very notable phenomenon happened on multiple third-and-long situations. The 49ers used five defensive linemen to rush. They removed linebacker Dre Greenlaw to insert defensive tackle Javon Kinlaw, who joined Bosa, Hargrave, Arik Armstead and Drake Jackson in the QB hunt up front.
“We’ve been trying to get that called for a few weeks now, and we guilted Wilks into it this week,” Armstead said with a grin. “It was getting home and we kept going back to it. We really look forward to bringing another D-lineman in the game. Kinlaw has been playing amazing.”
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Said Bosa: “Javon (Kinlaw) was pretty adamant about it throughout the week to get it called. When you call it and it works, you get it called a couple more times.”
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Kinlaw’s excellent play to begin the season, which featured six pressures over two games, gave the 49ers confidence to push more defensive chips into the middle of the table. Adding an extra defensive lineman takes a back-end player out of the game, theoretically making it more difficult to cover ground against playmakers.
But the 49ers’ secondary proved it was up to the more difficult task. And the 49ers believe their defense, which was already ranked No. 1 in the NFL last season, can evolve to another level while rolling the dice with five-man fronts in selected situations here in 2023.
“It’s five one-on-ones — let’s have a party,” Kinlaw said. “We all tell each other, ‘meet me there (at the quarterback).'”
Trent Williams, the 49ers’ left tackle, said that he’s certainly happy that he doesn’t have to block against the team’s five-man front outside of practice.
“It’s extremely tough because you’ve got five guys and out of those five, three of them are almost unblockable one-on-one,” Williams said. “And the other two are unblockable one-on-one probably 60 percent of the time. So anytime you can put five guys on the line, you know it’s going to be one-on-one across the board, or for a guy like Nick, they’ve got to leave a tight end or a back in to help. That puts odd numbers on the back end, and it means we have an advantage.
“That’s a trend in the league right now. The Giants take it one step further, with six or seven (D-linemen). They want to get the ball out of the quarterback’s hand pretty fast and limit how much we can go downfield.”
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A quick-release pass game is generally the only antidote to a stacked defensive line, and that proved to be the difference in this game. Jones was inefficient in the short game, while 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy was very effective against a New York front that brought extra pressure a staggering 85 percent of the time.
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Much of the 49ers’ defensive success was rooted in the fact that they successfully dissuaded the Giants from utilizing one of their signature weapons, the quarterback run game. Jones entered the contest with the second-highest QB scramble rate behind only Baltimore’s Lamar Jackson, but he finished with only two rushes for 5 yards.
“I was a little surprised they didn’t go with the zone-read game a little bit, which kind of hurt us back in 2020,” Bosa said. “But I guess they figured that we emphasized it throughout the week, so they didn’t go to it.”
The Giants managed only 29 total rushing yards on 11 carries, leaving their fate in the hands of the 49ers’ pass rush and secondary. Both units did a smothering job, and Gipson promised that more success is on its way. He said that the Rams’ early-game success on Sunday was simply a feeling-out period for Wilks, who’s in his first year as the 49ers’ defensive coordinator. Monday’s focused meeting, with its pledge to greater aggressiveness, was a clear sign to Gipson that the 49ers are ready to evolve under their new leader.
“He’s learning us just like we’re learning him,” Gipson said of Wilks. “And that’s just part of the process. He’s seeing what works and what doesn’t work. You don’t want to put the defense in a vulnerable situation. That’s part of being a great DC. That’s why he’s been around for a long time.
“It’s a long season. By midseason, he’ll know exactly what he’s got and I feel this defense is going to be flying on all cylinders.”
On Thursday night, the 49ers were already roaring at what looked to be at least close to full throttle. But perhaps they have even more in the tank. The overload of man coverage and the few times that the 49ers resorted to the five-man front might’ve illustrated that.
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So did Kinlaw’s ebullience in the postgame locker room. He glowed about the newfound chance to rush alongside Hargrave in those critical third-and-long situations.
“He specializes in just running through people,” Kinlaw said. “He does it at a high level. And I just like to come in behind him and do the same thing.”
(Photo: Thearon W. Henderson / Getty Images)
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