SANTA CLARA, Calif. — A few weeks after the San Francisco 49ers spent the bulk of their 2024 free agent dollars to revamp the defensive line, general manager John Lynch plopped down into a chair at an hotel near Orlando, FL, to discuss the moves.
Lynch and the Niners had just signed defensive ends Leonard Floyd and Yetur Gross-Matos and defensive tackle Jordan Elliott and traded for defensive tackle Maliek Collins. When asked how he felt about his team’s focused free-agent approach, Lynch let out a sigh of relief and suggested that his team could finally have some stability along their defensive line.
But it wasn’t to be.
A year later, Lynch sat in a different Florida hotel chair at the NFL league meetings discussing another flurry of defensive line moves, including the releases of Floyd, Collins and tackle Javon Hargrave. This offseason, the 49ers didn’t sign a single outside free agent at any spot on the line nor did they swing a trade to add to the group. The only notable move was re-signing rotational tackle Kevin Givens.
The message was clear: the 49ers plan to address their biggest roster hole via the 2025 NFL draft.
“We’ve got 11 draft choices,” Lynch said. “We’ve got to make ’em count and I think probably more so than recent past.”
Indeed, the Niners roll toward this year’s draft with significant needs at the one position group they’ve prioritized above all else since Lynch and coach Kyle Shanahan arrived in 2017. Star defensive end Nick Bosa is the lone returning starter and though Gross-Matos could slot in on the opposite edge and Elliott could start on the interior, San Francisco needs immediate impact all over the line.
Under Shanahan and Lynch’s leadership, a dominant defensive line has been a hallmark of their most successful teams and a sticking point in their down seasons.
“We’ve always prided ourselves with D-line and I think it’s a solid D-line class in this year’s draft and it’s deep too,” Lynch said.
In 2024, the Niners tied for 23rd in the NFL in sacks (37) and were 15th in pass rush win rate (41.2%). The bigger issue was a run defense that began struggling on the road to Super Bowl LVIII and carried those issues into last season when it allowed 4.4 yards per carry (17th in the NFL) and finished 28th in expected points added on defensive rush plays (minus-2.38).
Those numbers contributed to the Niners’ 6-11 record and the No. 11 pick in the draft. With Shanahan and Lynch in charge, the 49ers have had four losing records with those coming in 2017, 2018, 2020 and 2024. In those seasons, they have posted sack totals of 30, 37, 30 and 37, respectively. In all other years with Shanahan and Lynch at the helm, the 49ers have posted at least 44 sacks (2022) and had 48 in 2019, 2021 and 2023.
When the tide turned in 2019, it came on the heels of drafting Bosa with the No. 2 overall pick and trading for edge rusher Dee Ford. That duo combined with towering defensive tackles DeForest Buckner and Arik Armstead to form a unit so dominant that the 49ers have spent the past five years trying to recapture that magic.
“I think we all got a little spoiled in ’19,” Shanahan said. “When you have one of the best D-lines in the history of football, that’s very hard to maintain. I thought we’d done a good job of having a very good D-line for a number of years but to keep it at that level isn’t the most realistic and that is our goal…That’s what we believe wholeheartedly.”
That belief has been brought to life in various attempts to bolster the defensive line through free agency, trades, the draft or some combination of the three. After trading Buckner to the Indianapolis Colts in 2020, the Niners used the first-round choice they acquired on defensive tackle Javon Kinlaw. They followed by spending their first pick (a second-round choice in 2022) on end Drake Jackson and later round picks on tackle Kalia Davis (2022) and end Robert Beal Jr. (2023).
With minimal returns on all those choices, the 49ers turned their attention to free agency and trades, signing Hargrave to a four-year, $84 million deal in 2023 after Kinlaw struggled to find his footing. They also traded for ends Chase Young and Randy Gregory but got little production from either player before moving on.
While Floyd, Collins, Gross-Matos and Elliott had their moments in 2024, none established himself as a long-term solution.
“We let go of some guys who can still play and who are really good dudes who we wish we still could have, but that’s how this league is,” Shanahan said. “We’ve been fortunate to be able to re-sign a number of our players we’ve drafted, but you can’t always do that forever. And all those decisions with the D-line that kind of tied together with everything.”
The good news for the Niners is that this appears to be a good year to be in the market for talented defensive linemen. ESPN NFL draft analyst Matt Miller includes nine edge rushers or defensive tackles in his top 30 players and 29 in his top 100.
Which means San Francisco could strike on the defensive line as early as its top pick, No. 11 overall, and use multiple picks in the first couple days of the draft to bolster the front four similar to what the Los Angeles Rams did with their first two choices in 2024 (end Jared Verse and tackle Braden Fiske).
Texas A&M defensive end Shemar Stewart, George end Mykel Williams, and Mississippi defensive tackle Walter Nolen are among the defensive linemen expected to go in the first round whom the Niners have reportedly brought in for pre-draft visits. Beyond that, San Francisco has also shown interest in many of the linemen slated to go in the middle rounds, including Toledo defensive tackle Darius Alexander, Ohio State defensive tackle Tyleik Williams and Tennessee defensive tackle Omarr Norman-Lott.
With Penn State edge rusher Abdul Carter and Michigan defensive tackle Mason Graham likely to be gone before the Niners at No. 11, it’s possible they could have their pick of the next best available at those positions.
No matter the order, the only real surprise for this draft would be if the Niners do not spend serious resources to ignite a front four in search of a spark or three.
“What’s got us close always starts with the D-line,” Shanahan said. “That’s something we’re always looking to build and when you can’t have it that way, we’re going to still be working to try to find to get it that way.”
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