The 49ers have been asking a lot of their defense, and Raheem Morris has answered with a unit that looks as dangerous as any in the league through five weeks of 2026.
That’s the twist here: San Francisco isn’t doing this with a full-strength front. The Niners have been forced to play without Nick Bosa, Mykel Williams, Alfred Collins and other key rotational pieces, yet the defense keeps showing up like a problem offenses can’t quite solve.
The numbers tell the story. Through Week 5, San Francisco sits third in EPA allowed per play and third in points allowed per game, while also ranking sixth in yards allowed per game. For a defense dealing with that much attrition up front, that’s a hard standard to ignore.
What Morris has done looks different from the Robert Saleh blueprint that shaped the franchise’s identity under Kyle Shanahan. Saleh’s defense leaned on a wide-nine front, a heavy four-man rush and a simplified cover-3 structure behind it.
When the edge rush was healthy and humming, it worked beautifully. But when injuries piled up, especially in 2020 and again during his 2025 return, the unit settled into more ordinary territory.
Saleh’s five-season run as San Francisco’s defensive coordinator produced these results: 374 points allowed and 5,992 yards allowed in 2017; 435 points and 5,548 yards in 2018; 309 points and 4,498 yards in 2019; 390 points and 5,030 yards in 2020; and 371 points and 5,784 yards in 2025. The 2019 group was the peak version, finishing eighth in scoring defense and second in yards while powering the Super Bowl LIV run.
Morris, though, is winning with more moving parts. Instead of leaning almost entirely on star edge pressure, he’s squeezing production out of the entire roster.
Osa Odighizuwa leads the team with 15 pressures. Keion White has added 13 pressures and eight defensive stops.
And rookie Gracen Halton has emerged as a real problem for offenses, capped by a three-pressure performance and a forced-fumble touchdown in Week 5 against Seattle.
The scheme itself is doing a lot of the lifting. Morris has mixed in more varied fronts, stunts and strategic blitzing than Saleh typically used.
Saleh’s 2025 blitz rate was 23.4 percent; Morris has been over 27 percent through Week 4. That extra layer has helped San Francisco average 17 pressures per game even while missing so much firepower on the edge.
There’s also a real jump in the back end. Renardo Green turned in a 92.3 PFF grade in Week 5, and Malik Mustapha has been playing some of the best football of his career. The secondary isn’t just surviving; it’s helping drive the defense’s identity with a more aggressive edge.
Kyle Shanahan didn’t sound surprised by any of it.
"It doesn't surprise me with Raheem. I've just been around him for too long.
He's one of the best people and best coaches I've ever been around... He's done an unbelievable job this year, especially with the injuries, but just overall everything he's mixed up schematically.
I love the confidence he's given our DBs and the way they've been playing."
Saleh helped establish the standard in Santa Clara across two stints. Morris is showing that the standard can still hold, even when the lineup keeps changing.
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Renardo Green Is Giving The 49ers Defense Something It Needed
Renardo Green has become one of the more encouraging developments for the 49ers defense this season, giving San Francisco a young corner who is starting to look much more comfortable in Raheem Morris system. His growth has shown up in the numbers, too, with Green standing out among the teams cornerbacks in passes defended and ball hawk rate, a sign that he is not just hanging around plays but consistently finding ways to affect them.
The progress has not come out of nowhere, either. Kyle Shanahan pointed to the work Green did before the offseason program even got rolling as a major reason for the jump, and it is the kind of behind-the-scenes preparation that tends to show up once the games start counting. For a defense that always values playmaking on the back end, Green is starting to provide exactly the sort of presence that can change the way opponents test San Francisco. [Read more 🡒]