SANTA CLARA — Since the start of the 2023 season, the 49ers have been looking for someone — anyone — to set the edge opposite Nick Bosa on the defensive line.
Charles Omenihu and. Samson Ebuakam exited, the Niners tried Drake Jackson and Randy Gregory, traded for Chase Young, and had Cle Ferrell and a late-stage Kerry Hyder in the mix at right defensive end. The Niners, desperate for a solution, even put Arik Armstead back on the outside of the line for snaps.
They were failures across the board. Not one of them could consistently set an effective edge.
It might sound elementary, even trite, but it was all too obvious to opposing offenses, who attacked this weakness repeatedly, particularly in big games.
But now, 24 games after the start of last season, the problem might be solved.
And that solution came from the most unlikely source.
Not long after the 49ers cut their roster to 53 men last month, they made another move, cutting defensive end Sam Okuayinonu.
The University of Maryland alum had shown flashes of solid play in training camp and preseason action, so much so that he initially made the roster on cut-down day. Still, the team waived him a day later.
The Niners are lucky no one in the NFL noticed. Four days later, they were able to bring Okuayinonu back on the practice squad.
“If he got scooped, that would have been bad,” Bosa told me on Wednesday.
Real bad.
Okuayinonu’s name might be tricky to pronounce, but his impact on games has been hard to miss for the 49ers this season. He was solid as a practice-squad call-up against the Jets and Rams, even with sparse snaps. He had a sack in one of his six palys in Los Angeles.
But with injuries mounting and edges still not being set, the Niners added Okuayinonu to the 53-man roster last week — righting their wrong from a month earlier.
He responded with a near-perfect game on 19 snaps, forcing a fumble, twice hurrying Patriots quarterback Jacoby Brissett, and stuffing the run twice.
And if he missed an opportunity to set an edge all game, I missed it.
The 49ers missed that kind of play. Bosa missed it, too.
“Last year was kind of tough. We had guys come in kind of late, and they weren’t necessarily our kind of ends,” Bosa said. “Sam has stuff in his body that none of those guys have.
“We’re really happy about him… I honestly think he’s a perfect fit for us.”
To set the edge is to establish an outside perimeter to the defensive front. No matter what, the ballcarrier, be it the quarterback or running back, doesn’t get outside of you.
Fail to do it, and the running back is going one-on-one against defensive backs, the quarterback is free to dance around for what seems like minutes, or they can scramble for big gains.
It’s not glamorous, and it won’t land you on the halftime highlights, but it is vital to playing winning defense.
It’s the kind of defense the Niners didn’t play last season.
Niners’ opponents posted a positive EPA (estimated points added) per rush going off the right side of the defense (running left) in 2023. The league-wide average resulted in a negative EPA.
The Niners were in the bottom six of the league in rush defense overall last season.
And unsurprisingly, 49ers opponents ran that direction again and again and again last season — until the Niners would switch Bosa to that side. Guess which direction Green Bay, Detroit, and Kansas City ran in last season’s playoffs? The one opposite Bosa.
So, San Francisco went all-in this past spring in an effort to fix the issue. They spent $20 million on veteran defensive end Leonard Floyd and another $18 million on the big-bodied Yetur Gross-Matos.
And it should be noted that after a slow and delayed start, respectively, both Floyd and Gross-Matos did well against the Pats.
Floyd, in particular, finally figured out that less is more when you’re opposite Bosa.
Just set the edge. If that means you have to stop mid-rush, so be it — Bosa is so impactful on the opposite side, the ball will probably come right to you.
“Flo really bought into the scheme last game. He didn’t get a sack, but in the run game, he was doing exactly what we need,” Bosa said.
Still, the most effective end in the game — not just in setting the edge, but also in making big, flash plays — was Okuayinonu, an undrafted 26-year-old from Liberia who only had five years of football-playing experience before he entered the NFL.
The Patriots might not be a great barometer, but Okuayinonu’s performance in his three games to date indicates that he deserves more snaps moving forward.
Sunday’s game against the Cardinals, who boast the hyper-mobile Kyler Murray at quarterback and the outstanding, big-bodied James Conner at running back, will be a much better test of the 49ers’ possible competence and Okuayinonu, in particular.
When Bosa says Okuayinonu has things prior counterparts didn’t have, he’s alluding to the lineman’s burst, strength, and length.
Surprisingly short — Okuayinonu is listed at a generous 6-foot-1 – but the end carries a hefty 270 pounds with ease. He also boasts long 33-inch arms and, and back at his pro day coming out of Maryland, benched pressed 225 pounds a whopping 31 times, all with the kind of explosion off the line you’d expect from a much lighter man. (Okuayinonu had a 10-plus-foot broad jump at 270 pounds — nearly a foot longer than Bosa’s.)
Big burst off the line, length and strength — Okuayinonu had the “power”-end ultimate defensive end package.
He just needed to learn how to properly use his gifts.
Okuayinonu moved to the U.S. from Liberia when he was 12 and played soccer until his senior year of high school, when his cousin suggested the ever-growing soccer player that he had outgrown his preferred sport.
“I had no idea about football,” Okuayinonu said. “I hated it at first… I didn’t like the physicality of it, it was too much thinking” But between “the brotherhood… the fans, the crowd. I started to like the game more and more.”
After going to junior college to play, he was a standout at Maryland, but his game was too raw to be drafted. Two years with the Titans, where he was up-and-down on the active roster, put him on the 49ers’ radar.
And his play in Niners training camp, which was sporadic because of his spot as one of the final members of the roster and a hamstring injury, made him someone the Niners wanted to protect, at least for a day, last month.
Still, they waived him, and the best bit of luck in this team’s so-far snakebitten season might be that they were able to bring him back.
“I don’t really know what happened,” Okuayinonu said of being waived. “But I’m grateful for the opportunity to be here… I’ve learned so much… I’ve elevated my game in ways I didn’t know I was capable of reaching.”
“He’s been a beast in practice,” Niners coach Kyle Shanahan said Monday. “o watch him carry it over to the games is what I’d like to say we expected because he’s been such a pain in practice. It was cool to see him do it to somebody else here on Sunday.”
If he can continue to do it to somebody else, the Niners’ run defense will go to a new level: competent
And competency in that area is worth its weight in gold in the NFL. It frees up Bosa and interior lineman Malik Collins to attack the quarterback. It allows the Niners to be creative with linebacker Fred Warner on blitzes. It gives San Francisco the ability to play lighter (nickel and dime packages) even on early downs.
Execution of the fundamentals would change the game for the San Francisco defense.
And that could change the trajectory of the season.
