SANTA CLARA — Nick Bosa’s torn ACL was a gut punch to the entire 49ers’ roster.
“I’m sick. I’m so sick for him,” linebacker Fred Warner said Wednesday.
But the season-ending injury to the Niners’ All-Pro defensive end is also a call to arms for this team’s offense, which has been middling at best this season.
We all understand why the Niners’ offense isn’t firing on all cylinders right now. It’s hard to move the ball when three of your five starting offensive linemen are on the injury report every week, and you’re also playing receiver roulette and, oh yeah, your All-Pro tight end — the fulcrum of the offense — is sidelined, too.
Not to mention the starting quarterback has been out for the last two games as well.
All this to say that the Niners get a pass, if not a commendation, for being league-average on offense.
But with the Niners’ defense thrown into a state of flux with Bosa’s injury, the bar has been raised for the other side of the ball.
The Niners’ defense is still a work in progress, and even with their excellent start, it’s hard to imagine them reaching top-10 NFL status without their one elite pass rusher.
That means the 49ers’ offense must be a top-10 unit – if not top-5 — the rest of the way if the Niners want to maintain the lofty goals that inevitably come after a 3-0 start to the season.
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That improved play might come naturally. Not only is Brock Purdy expected to return to the field Sunday against the Jaguars, with free-agent signing DeMarcus Robinson by his side (he was activated this week from the suspension list), but the Niners will also not be playing a defense whose entire scheme is to stop the outside-zone run — as the Seahawks, Saints, and Cardinals defenses are.
This might be the game in which the Niners’ run game breaks out. And make no mistake about it — it needs to break out.
The Niners are 13th in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play at -0.01, per NFL Next Gen Stats. But the majority of that success has come in the passing game, where the Niners are seventh in EPA per play and 10th in yards per play so far this campaign.
The run game, meanwhile, is right near the bottom of the NFL. They’re 28th in rushing yards per play (3.3) and in EPA per rush.
More damning, the Niners are 21st in the NFL in rushing yards before contact (0.90) this season. That’s a mark that would have finished last in the NFL last season.
What that tells us is that the rushing lanes aren’t as clear as in 2023 (sixth, 1.77), 2022 (ninth, 1.51), or 2019 (sixth, 1.74). Meanwhile, Christian McCaffrey hasn’t posted a rush where he reached 20 miles per hour since Dec. 10, 2023.
“There are a couple plays that we’ve been one guy off on that I thought we could’ve got a big one on, especially versus some eight-man fronts,” head coach Kyle Shanahan said. (That one guy, most of the time? Blocking tight end Luke Ferrell.) “But it takes 11 guys to do it. You can’t get a big one when one guy’s off. But I’m not too concerned with the run game, but I’d like to get more production.”
But that run game is supposed to be the backbone of Kyle Shanahan’s offense. That should have been especially true in the last two games, where the Niners had a backup quarterback at the helm of the offense.
That is not what happened.
Instead, the rushing offense looked anemic with backs consistently hitting a wall at or behind the line of scrimmage. McCaffrey has minus-32 rushing yards over expectation this season.
Meanwhile, the Niners are a 60 percent pass team.
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As such, we’ve seen Mac Jones in uncomfortable passing situations, further exposing the offensive line’s struggles and the receiving corps’ inconsistencies.
The job was done — 3-0 is a great start and undeniable — but there are 14 more jobs to do, and while the staff on the offense should improve, arguably the team’s best defender this season won’t be there moving forward.
The team’s inability to establish a dominant run game has unfairly shifted the burden of victory to other units, and with Bosa’s absence, that burden only intensifies.
And while the Niners have fashioned themselves a defense-first team whose offense pulls through in the clutch through these first three weeks, that paradigm has to shift, starting Sunday. The identity of this team, by necessity, has to be that of a squad that puts points on the board.
That means the Niners need to start running the football with some force.
Can it be done? Absolutely. The Jaguars are a great team to do it against.
Will it be done?
Folks, that’s why we play the games.