Every game is a big game, but divisional games matter more. They just do. The magnitude of the San Francisco 49ers-Seattle Seahawks rivalry took a bit of a nosedive last year. Thankfully, much has changed for both teams since the previous meeting.
The year is 2092, and as much as football will evolve by then, it’ll still come down to stopping the run and running the ball. Christian McCaffrey’s absence was felt on many levels, but his red zone efficiency and nose for the end zone propelled the Niners’ 2023 offense to unseen levels. They were one of the most prolific offenses of the century. When you take an MVP-caliber player away, your rushing attack is going to call off a cliff. Shocking, I know.
Stopping the run has been an issue for San Francisco since DeMeco Ryans left. You can point to injuries and personnel, but the attitude hasn’t been there. We are about to find out how quickly Robert Saleh injects attitude and violence into his unit. Let’s start on that side of the ball as we preview Week 1 between the 49ers and the Seahawks.
Getting new Grubb on the plate
Seattle fell for a collegiate offensive coordinator who had an NFL quarterback and three NFL receivers. Oh, and NFL offensive linemen. That same coordinator is back in the college ranks after a one-year stint in the league. If you’re not a college football fan, the coordinator we’re referring to had all offseason to come up with a game plan against an unranked opponent coming off a 2-win season.
How did he fare? After scoring a touchdown on the first drive, Alabama didn’t score again until the fourth quarter. Moreover, they had zero identity in the running game. That was a glaring issue for the Seahawks last season.
Out with Ryan Grubb, in with old friend, Klint Kubiak. 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan believes we’ll see an offense that we’re used to watching every Sunday:
“I think there’s some similarities. It’s always different how you adjust to your players, but I know they’re going to be a balanced team that wants to put Sam in some good situations and give that ball to their good running backs. Then it usually comes down to third down, so it’s real similar to us. There’s window dressing that’s different, but the way that they want a game to go, I think it’s going to be very similar to how we want it to go.”
Some may chalk it up to “It’s just the preseason,” but it’s almost as if Kubiak was trolling Grubb’s 2024 offense the way Seattle was on the opposite end of the spectrum when it came to running the ball. Last year, the Seahawks threw the ball at the fourth-highest rate in the NFL. And it’s not as if they were a 3-12 team always playing catch-up. Not even close! They were a 10-win team.
Geno Smith lined up in the shotgun over 76 percent of the time, while Seattle only used play-action on 19 percent of its dropbacks. It would be difficult to find a worse split than that. It would also be challenging to come up with five offensive linemen in the NFL who would look good under those circumstances.
When the quarterback lives in shotgun, the pass rushers know where they’re going to be. You’re begging to be pressured. Coincidentally, among qualifying quarterbacks, Geno was pressured more than any other QB.
Run the damn ball!
Seattle’s preseason rushing stats would make any offensive line coach drool. In Week 1, they ran the ball 32 times for 170 yards. There were a pair of 20+ yard gains, but the theme was death by a thousand cuts. That wasn’t an outlier. In fact, in Week 2 against the Kansas City Chiefs — and they did this against the Chiefs’ starters — it got better.
The Seahawks ran the ball 48 times, as if they weren’t allowed to throw, for 268 yards. Again, this wasn’t Jalen Milroe running for 60 yards like he did at Alabama. Nope. The Seahawks were doing whatever they wanted, mainly relying on the same zone concepts the 49ers run.
Seattle ran the ball only 24 times in the final preseason game for 130 yards. They didn’t play any starters from the looks of it. Why? Based on reading the reports from joint practice, they took it to Green Bay during the week.
Kubiak and the Seahawks aren’t re-inventing the wheel. They’re getting under center, relying on their athletic offensive lineman to create running lanes so their backs can maximize yardage after pinballing off tackles and gaining a couple of yards after contact. Sound familiar? It should.
Kubiak aligned his quarterbacks under center at the fourth-highest rate last year at 41.7 percent with the New Orleans Saints. Conversely, Brian Grubb used the eighth-lowest at 21.8 percent. Sam Darnold will feel at home. When he was with the Minnesota Vikings, they were under center at the second-highest rate at 48 percent.
Not only will Seattle be doing away with shotgun formations, but Saleh and the 49ers can expect to see plenty of two-back sets. The Saints used two or more players in the backfield (excluding the QB) on a league-high 23.8 percent of snaps. Seattle was at 6.1 percent, which is the ninth-lowest.
Kubiak isn’t trolling. This is who he is as a play caller.
Shifting back to Saleh
National pundits are certain the 49ers will take a step back after losing Leonard Floyd, Javon Hargrave, and Maliek Collins along the defensive line. Even at Hargrave’s peak, neither of those three felt like the kind of players who resembled the type that made the Niners defense dominant during the Saleh/Ryans days.
Rolling with the youth movement doesn’t come without risk. Shanahan said the kids up front may present a challenge this season. But the style and structure should already be an improvement from the trio listed above.
The transition from finesse pass rushers to “good luck moving that guy” should make a world of difference, not just in the running game, but when it comes to tackling. First, a look at the difference in the average starting defensive line heading into Week 1 last year compared to this season:
’24 avg: 6’2″ 3/4 & 279 pounds, 32″ arms
’25 avg: 6’4″ 3/4 & 290 pounds, 33.5″ arms
The likelihood of smaller defenders falling off tackles is higher, which in turn leads to more yards after contact. There were several issues with Nick Sorensen’s defense last year. If we can pinpoint it to three, one of those was the missed tackles.
The 49ers’ defense missed a tackle on 13.8 percent of their tackling opportunities, per Next Gen Stats. That was the ninth-highest rate in the NFL and the highest rate on the team since Fred Warner’s rookie year. Those Seattle games were rough. San Francisco missed 23 tackles in both meetings against the Seahawks last year.
The 49ers were unusually static defensively last season, even for a coordinator who has never called plays. That led to outlier results. Nick Bosa, a perennial Defensive Player of the Year candidate, lined up over the right tackle on 70 percent of his snaps in nine of the 14 games he played in, including both matchups against Seattle.
Think about that. You have one of the best players in the league, and instead of creating mismatches or trying to open up a clean runway for him, Sorensen was like, “Nah, right here is good.”
Fred Warner is a Hall of Fame blitzer. He had the fewest pass rush attempts last season, despite playing more snaps than in some other seasons where the numbers were close. If the argument is that Sorensen didn’t trust [redacted], then I get it. Perhaps consider finding another player to put your best players in a position to succeed?
Speaking of rushing the passer with your best players, the 49ers recorded the third-lowest blitz rate on early downs and the fourth-lowest blitz rate on third downs. When they did blitz, they sucked. The Niners generated pressure 4.3 percent more often when they blitzed, compared to when they sent four or fewer rushers. The percentage difference created the second-lowest increase in the NFL. Shanahan had no choice but to part ways with Sorensen, regardless of the injuries and the personnel issues.
Meanwhile, the mad man of a coordinator Saleh did not hold back on third downs in the preseason:
We’ll also see a seismic shift in the type of coverage the Niners run. The 49ers ran zone 71.4 percent of the time last year, but had a 2-high shell only 19 percent of the time. That tells me Sorensen was living in Cover 3 — just asking to get beaten on elementary passing concepts.
Watching Saleh evolve over the years has been a joy. Saleh-led defenses ranked top three by highest Cover 4 usage rate in each season from 2019 to 2023. In 2020, Saleh’s last year with the Niners, the 49ers led the NFL in quarters usage with a 31.7 rate. That’s who he is, and it allows the defensive backs to be multiple and defend routes in a way they couldn’t from a structural standpoint in Cover 3.
Welcome back, Bob.
The Jimmys and the Joes
Kubiak could have the best play call possible, but if Nick Bosa runs through Abe Lucas’s face, we’ll never find out. Saleh may have dialed up his favorite blitz, but if 73-year-old Cooper Kupp takes rookie Upton Stout to task, the Seahawks stay on the field, and it was all for naught.
It’s a player’s league. It’s about the Jimmys and the Joes.
Seattle invested in athletes up front, and their plan looked to be coming to fruition in the preseason. They are as young as the Niners up front.
A scheme change will almost assuredly benefit Lucas and leave tackle Charles Cross. Rookie Grey Zabel was mocked to the 49ers in the top 15. He was a draft community favorite. Seattle’s center also went to North Dakota State a year earlier. There should be some cohesion between the two. Right guard Anthony Bradford is 332 pounds. It’s safe to say he’s the least athletic. I think we can also assume he is a people mover.
It’ll be a quality test for the likes of Bryce Huff, who is not known as a run defender, and the rookies. Mykel Williams was drafted to be a star. But it’s Week 1. Like Zabel, there will be inevitable struggles. It’s a nice luxury for the 49ers to counter Bradford with a mammoth of a man in Alfred Collins. Players like him and C.J. West were brought in to pull the 49ers out of the dumps when it comes to defensive rushing statistics.
Fred Warner and Dee Winters will man the middle. Another shocking stat about the 49ers’ defense last year was their inability to stop passes over the middle. Warner’s completion percentage allowed was ten percentage points higher than he allowed in any previous season. Again, outlier season.
Winters is excellent in coverage. He’s aware, and not only should he allow Warner to blitz, but he also has a knack for getting into throwing lanes or taking away the pass before it’s thrown. Speaking of outliers, Warner and Winters will face a 274-pound fullback. I wouldn’t worry about them confusing Sam Darnold. But it’s not every day you have to take on a fullback that’s bigger than Nick Bosa.
Can Darnold play mistake-free football? Will Saleh’s coverage bait him into a mistake? How will Kubiak use Jaxon Smith-Njigba? He seems poised for a breakout season. JSN led the league in receiving yards out of the slot last year. But that’s also been where Kupp has made his living.
It’ll be a wait-and-see for the Seahawks’ passing offense. Kupp thrives off motion, but Kubiak-led offenses have been under 20 percent motion when it comes to their receivers. So we’d be guessing when it comes to their passing game. Just as we would when it comes to Deommodore Lenoir, Upton Stout, and Renardo Green, and how they’ll be deployed.
Running backs Kenneth Walker and Zach Charbonnet run hard and force miss tackles, but they like to bounce runs when they don’t have to. That could play into the hands of the speedy Winters. Both backs may pop a run or two, but if the Niners can force them to be efficient on a down-to-down basis, Saleh has to like his odds.
The game plan feels pretty straightforward for Saleh. Stop the run. Confuse Darnold on obvious passing downs—no cheap penalties. Limit missed tackles. Field goals won’t beat you. Explosive plays will.
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