Robert Saleh, San Francisco 49ers. (Photo by Lachlan Cunningham/Getty Images)
Will the San Francisco 49ers retain a top-10 defense again in 2020?
Defense wins championships, but will the San Francisco 49ers‘ be championship-caliber next year?
The 49ers shocked the NFL last season by nearly going worst-to-first in the NFC en route to an improbable Super Bowl run. Though the division rival Arizona Cardinals were worse than them in 2018, San Francisco did have the No. 2 overall pick in the 2019 NFL Draft for a reason. Once quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo tore his ACL in September of 2018, the 49ers were a terrible football team.
With a healthy signal-caller in Garoppolo, another great draft by general manager John Lynch and a tremendous coaching staff headlined by head coach Kyle Shanahan and defensive coordinator Robert Saleh, the 49ers were a buzzsaw nobody in the NFC wanted any part of. Its dominating defensive line helped the 49ers finish with the eighth-best scoring defense from a season ago.
Had Garoppolo hit a wide-open Emmanuel Sanders in stride, we’d be talking about the 49ers’ chances of repeating rather than if they will experience a dreaded Super Bowl hangover. Instead, the 49ers found themselves one completed deep ball away from hoisting another Lombardi Trophy.
As long as the 49ers have Shanahan running the offense and Lynch as general manager, San Francisco should remain in contention for Super Bowls during the next three to five years. However, is a regression on the defensive side of the ball inevitable for the 49ers? Can they maintain top-quarter status in the league, or will they fall to the middle of the pack?
Are the San Francisco 49ers a defensive regression candidate in 2020?
While offensive sustainability year-over-year is very much part of the NFL’s fabric, it’s very difficult to field a top-tier defense these days when the league has become so offensive-driven. If we look back at some of the more notable defenses of the last three years, more often than not, those teams regress on that side of the ball.
Of the four conference championship teams from the 2017 campaign (Jacksonville Jaguars, Minnesota Vikings, New England Patriots, Philadelphia Eagles), every single one of them saw their top-five defense regress in 2018. Only Jacksonville stayed in the top-five the following season, and the Jaguars weren’t anything close to a playoff team that year.
None of the final four teams from the 2018 season had top-five defenses (Patriots, Kansas City Chiefs, Los Angeles Rams, New Orleans Saints). Only Super Bowl 53 champion New England had a top-10 defense of that foursome. Every single team in the top-five from 2018 (Chicago Bears, Baltimore Ravens, Tennessee Titans, Houston Texans, Jaguars), regressed defensively in 2019.
To be totally transparent, Baltimore and Chicago still finished No. 3 and No. 4 respectively in team scoring defense last year, so it wasn’t a huge drop-off, but both were slightly worse when compared to the season prior. New England had the top spot last season, but the Vikings were the only top-five scoring defense to win a playoff game back in January. Maybe things are changing?
While the 49ers defense could technically improve from No. 8 to something better in 2020, it feels like they’re more likely to drop to top-12 status, than to ascend into top-five. We know 49ers defensive end Nick Bosa is a freaking animal, but will Lynch trading DeForest Buckner to the Indianapolis Colts to draft Javon Kinlaw out of South Carolina make up for it in the aggregate?
Richard Sherman is not getting any younger in the San Francisco defensive backfield. With his great 2019 regular season, he left no doubt that he has a spot in Canton after he retires. However, he got burnt like toast on the reg in Super Bowl 54. It was not a good look for the former fifth-round pick out of Stanford. He’s on the wrong side of 30 anyway, playing on borrowed time.
The last big key here is the 49ers will play a tougher schedule in 2020 than in 2019. San Francisco isn’t going to sneak up on anybody with a third-place schedule anymore. The 49ers are the hunted in the NFC, and will get every team’s best shot when they play them this fall. We also have to wonder if this is Saleh’s last season as a defensive coordinator. He’s a future NFL head coach.
Overall, the 49ers should be in the mix to get back to the Super Bowl and can represent the NFC in Tampa in February. However, it’ll likely be more because of the Shanahan zone-blocking schemed offensive attack than having a top-tier defense. No, the 49ers won’t be abysmal on that side of the ball, but data shows us the defense is more likely to be good than great in 2020.
Look for the 49ers defense to slide back a bit from top-eight to top-12 than improve to top-five.