© Mark J. Rebilas | 2020 Feb 2
The Niners have had a pretty busy offseason for a team that was one quarter away from hoisting the Super Bowl trophy last season.
Arguably their best defensive player is gone, with DeForest Buckner’s looming lucrative extension leading to a trade with the Colts. The 49ers also lost a Hall of Fame talent on offense, with Joe Staley being forced into an early retirement. Number one receiver Emmanuel Sanders also moved on in free agency.
It can’t be argued that the 49ers didn’t replace those players, but the extent to which remains to be seen. Trent Williams certainly seems like a like-for-like swap with Staley, but San Francisco is relaying on rookies to fill the other openings.
“I think it’s either the same or worse,” The Athletic’s Matt Barrows said when asked by Papa & Lund if the 49ers will be better, worse or the same as last year. “I don’t see how you could come to any other conclusion than that when you’ve lost three real pillars of that team. I’m talking about DeForest Buckner, Emmanuel Sanders and Joe Staley. The Joe Staley loss — you got a commensurate pickup in Trent Williams for him — so that sort of gets rubbed out. Those other two are major losses.
“You made draft picks at those positions, those guys are going to be good. Now whether they’re as good in year one where the offseason is abbreviated due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I don’t think you can expect that.”
It’s not as simple as that, however. The 49ers are a team full of young talent on both sides of the ball, including at key positions like quarterback and middle linebacker. It’s not unreasonable to expect to see improvement from many players up-and-down the roster in 2020.
“The reason it gets to even or maybe even a little bit beyond even, is you’ve got guys like Dee Ford on defense and Jimmy Garoppolo on offense. If they’re better than they were in 2019, then your team is probably going to be better overall.”
Injuries will also be a factor. The 49ers defense caught the injury bug big time during the middle of last season. How much better will the team be if they are even half as injured this time around?
“Especially for Ford. I forget what the percentage of snaps that he played last year but it was like 20 percent which is one in every five defensive plays he was a part of. I mean if he’s a part of two in every five defensive plays this year it wouldn’t be a huge leap forward but I think you’d see it on the field.
“If you’ve got Dee Ford 100 percent healthy and Nick Bosa 100 percent healthy, which they didn’t really have at any point last year, maybe in Week 1, then you’ve got some really great edge presence throughout the season. So I think that would kind’ve be enough to lift the aggregate up.
“The other part is that they dealt with a lot of injuries last year and still made it to the Super Bowl. It’s hard to see the injury issue being quite as bad as it was last year.”
Listen to the interview below.