This week there has been a lot of praise for new 49ers defensive coordinator Raheem Morris and the defense he’s installing. Safety Ji’Ayir Brown has been vocal about it saying it’s put him in a position to succeed. The defensive backs as a whole seem to be turning over a new leaf after 2025’s six-interception dissappointment. The consensus is the defense Morris is installing is simplified and much eaiser for the defensive backs to thrive in.
NBC Sports Bay Area’s Matt Maiocco summed it up best:
The
49ers’ changes on defense include expanded usage of five defensive linemen and a simplified set of coverage assignments designed to enable the cornerbacks and safeties to play fast without being required to make too many split-second adjustments.
This can be good or bad, and we really won’t know until the season begins. There’s a reason NFL offenses and defenses are complex to begin with. It’s also possible they can get too complicated.
We’ll start with what the players are loving right now, and what hopefully translates into the regular season: simplified coverage assignments. This has to be a welcome change from what has been happening in the previous years. Especially when some of the split second decisions may have been a result from a massive miscommunication.
How bad was the miscommunication? Let’s go way back to 2018. One of the most-oft used reasons for the defensive drop in performance was communication and how the team needed to communicate better. Miscommunications was a common theme in October that year. This was the season the 49ers brought in Richard Sherman who always praised then defensive coordinator Robert Saleh’s gameplans, but also said the team needed to communicate better.
As pointed out by Maiocco, there is less need for a split second adjustment in the Morris defense, and that doesn’t fall into communication, but both can be placed into a bucket of complexity.
That was a young 49ers defense and miscommunications were expected. That said, it seemed like a reason every week. As the losses piled up, I peeled a layer back and asked “Why aren’t they communicating? What’s the issue with communication?” Basically if every week the defense wasn’t on the same page and communicating properly, that seems to be a coaching issue. The results were (wrong) split second decisions and things falling apart at the worst moments.
As you know in year three of Robert Saleh, the 49ers went to the Super Bowl and lost for other reasons. Even after Saleh’s departure and return, miscommunications were a common theme of the defense.
So point to Morris. Robert Saleh’s defenses are so complex, maybe dialing it back might be a good thing, even at the NFL level. Or maybe things are still complicated when they are called for coverage assignments, but everything they have to look after isn’t near as large as what Saleh’s defensive backs had to. Again, we don’t know.
Of course, this could also go the other direction. “Dumbing it down” and leading to disastrous results.
2016, Chip Kelly’s first and last season with the 49ers. Now before we go any further, let’s all agree the offense itself was destined for mediocrity. Simple or complicated, the 49ers had one of the worst rosters in football. Keeping that in mind, it doesn’t help when offense being installed is simpler.
A big example of this simplication came with how the 49ers dealt with the playcall. This was a team that went from Jim Harbaugh’s playcall by comittee, to Geep Chryst who called the plays minus the comittee, but keeping all the delay of game penalties. Well, this new offense fixed it, and tight end Garrett Celek broke down how much better it was with Kelly:
“In the past we had a lot of delay-of-games because either we’re not getting the play in time from upstairs or it’s just taking the quarterback too long to read the whole play out. Where now, it’s a lot quicker. We have hand signals, so you can’t have 15 words through hand signals, stuff like that. It’s got to be boom, boom, boom. So when you got less verbiage, it’s easier to remember. It’s kind of genius.”
That was just a taste of the offense coming. An offense that finished last in yards gained and points scored. It’s fair to remind everyone the 49ers’ defense isn’t starting from the same place that offense was.
The point is a more complicated defense or offense is almost a necessity at the NFL level, but it can get too complex at times.
Where on the spectrum does this simplification fall? Will the 49ers be too predictable or is it really going to keep everyone in a better position to succeed? We just won’t know.
I do know my biggest criticism of Saleh (who is a terrific defensive coordinator) is that when starters go down, things take a massive step back. There seems to be more turbulent a decline when injuries happen on his defense with just one player as opposed to others. The pushback can be on the depth of his defenses, to be fair. I’m just saying when Nick Bosa went down last year, the 49ers pass rush vanished along with it. Basically, when the cheat codes get turned off, things fall apart.
If Morris’s simplified defense can solve that problem — a defense that doesn’t collapse when the cheat codes are gone — then maybe the players—not just the defensive backs— are onto something.
We’ll find out in September.
