49ers assistants on Jordan Mason’s hands, Javon Hargrave’s value, Ji’Ayir Brown’s role
June 5, 2023
49ers assistants on Jordan Mason’s hands, Javon Hargrave’s value, Ji’Ayir Brown’s role
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SANTA CLARA, Calif. — What are the 49ers’ young running backs concentrating on this offseason? What sort of trickle-down effect does Javon Hargrave have on the rest of the defensive line? How will Ji’Ayir Brown be used in a secondary that already has two good safeties in Talanoa Hufanga and Tashaun Gipson Sr.?
The 49ers assistant coaches discussed those topics and more on Wednesday, which was a light day of OTAs — meetings but no on-field work — for the players. There was one newcomer in the group who spoke Wednesday. Klint Kubiak, the older brother of 49ers assistant quarterbacks coach Klay Kubiak, has taken over the passing game specialist position that Bobby Slowik, who is now the Texans’ offensive coordinator, had last season.
Two other assistants have new titles. Daniel Bullocks officially is the team’s defensive backs coach this year after serving as safeties coach previously. (He still primarily works with the safeties while defensive coordinator Steve Wilks mostly works with the cornerbacks.) Nick Sorensen is the defensive passing game specialist/nickels coach even though he mostly works with linebackers.
Young tailbacks adjusting to the Christian McCaffrey effect
Jordan Mason and Tyrion Davis-Price are big-bodied tailbacks who know how to throw their weight around in the running game.
Soft hands? That definitely wasn’t their forte when they were coming out of college last year. Davis-Price caught just 28 passes in three years at LSU. Mason had 26 catches in four seasons at Georgia Tech.
Christian McCaffrey’s arrival last year, however, has forced the youngsters to alter their games. As running backs coach Anthony Lynn explained, the 49ers offense is now set up to take advantage of McCaffrey’s gifts as both a runner and receiver. And that means the rest of the team’s tailbacks must shift accordingly.
“You don’t want to have two offenses,” he said. “You don’t want to have Christian come out for a water break and have the next guy come in and have to call (different) plays. So our guys have had to evolve and do more in the passing game.”
As a result, route running and pass catching are a major emphasis for the running back group this season. Mason, in particular, has seemed to make strides. He’s caught a lot of passes in the two practices that have been open to reporters so far. And while Davis-Price had a drop last week, he had a long reception on a nice touch pass from Brandon Allen in Wednesday’s session.
“It’s very new to them,” Lynn said. “They are two big guys who can run. And both of them are more comfortable now in what we’re doing. It’s night and day to me right now.”
What Javon Hargrave means for Javon Kinlaw
The summary 49ers defensive line coach Kris Kocurek gave on Thursday was a succinct one.
“Everyone knows our philosophy on D-linemen here at the Niners,” Kocurek said. “The more, the merrier.”
So when Kocurek submitted his evaluations of this year’s available free agents at the position to the 49ers’ scouting department, he sat back and hoped that the 49ers would land the biggest fish on his list. That was former Eagles’ defensive tackle Hargrave, considered by many to be the top 2023 defensive free agent on the open market.
“Paraag (Marathe) and the front office does their work and figures out if it can fit or not,” Kocurek said. “I just keep my fingers crossed and hope that it can.”
Kocurek’s wish came true when the 49ers bucked expectations and signed Hargrave to a four-year deal worth up to $84 million.
“Just one more piece of the puzzle — a very talented piece of the puzzle, obviously,” Kocurek said. “I’ve followed Javon throughout his career and he’s always been a really, really, really good player. And I think the past couple of years in Philly, he’s really separated himself from a lot of the interior players in the game — especially from a pass rush standpoint, in terms of being able to pressure the quarterback and win one-on-ones at a really high rate. There’s only a couple other names in the NFL who have won at the rate that he’s won.”
Suddenly, perhaps the 49ers’ biggest weakness of 2022 — the interior defensive line — looks like a strength. The addition of Hargrave means that Javon Kinlaw can move into a second-string rotational role, which the 49ers believe will be beneficial to the fourth-year man’s bid to finally stay healthy. Kinlaw is in the midst of what can become his first fully available offseason with the 49ers (he was still rehabbing from knee surgery at this time last year).
“This is the first offseason since we’ve had (Kinlaw) that he’s been able to start the offseason healthy and actually stack days on top of each other,” Kocurek said. “We’ve been going for a while now and he’s been continuously stacking days. He’s getting himself more ready to play this offseason than at any point of his career. It’s all been really positive. I’m looking forward to it.”
Nick Sorensen on the new wave of linebackers
Rookie linebacker Jalen Graham ran a pedestrian 4.64-second 40-yard dash in the run-up to the draft, which likely contributed to him lasting until the tail end of the seventh round.
Speed, however, hasn’t been an issue for Graham or any of the team’s young linebackers in recent practices.
“He’s been doing really well,” Sorensen said. “He flies around.”
Graham is one of several 49ers linebackers who technically weren’t linebackers in college. He played the so-called “star” position at Purdue, which is a quasi safety-linebacker spot. The player might stuff the line of scrimmage on first down, cover a tight end on second down and blitz the quarterback on third.
Fred Warner and Marcelino McCrary-Ball played similar positions at BYU and Indiana, respectively. Another linebacker, Demetrius Flannigan-Fowles, played a hybrid safety spot at Arizona.
“It’s the guys who play out in space,” Sorensen said. “And there’s a lot of that in college.”
The position has different names at different schools. But it’s usually a spot for a playmaker who’s smart and who can run — which is a top requirement for a 49ers linebacker.
“It’s, ‘OK, you’re 212-215 (pounds) in college, can we get you into the low 220s and then mid 220s?’” Sorensen said. “It’s a position that fits our scheme.”
Ji’Ayir Brown being eyed for three-safety sets
Newly-promoted 49ers DB coach Daniel Bullocks, who continues to specialize in working with the team’s safeties, has been impressed with Brown.
The rookie safety from Penn State, who led all 2023 draft-eligible players with 10 interceptions over the past two seasons, has four picks already in OTAs with the 49ers. He dropped a potential fifth interception.
“When you look at a guy like who has 10 career interceptions in college — usually, the guys who are always around the football are going to get the football,” Bullocks said. “And it really doesn’t stop when they get to the NFL. They’re usually around the ball as well.”
The 49ers, of course, already have two very good veteran safeties in Hufanga and Gipson. But they plan to deploy Brown early in his career through the use of three-safety sets, and they believe such formations will be made possible by the rookie’s adaptability.
“He has our DNA that we’re looking for on defense,” Bullocks said. “We’re looking for a guy that’s physical, that’s smart, that can finish. When you look at Ji’Ayir, he’s versatile. He can line up on all three levels of the defense. He can line up on the line of scrimmage. He can rush off the edge. He can drop back a level and play man coverage. He can play zone as well. And he can also drop back into the post and show that range and go get the football.”
Brian Schneider taking wait-and-see approach with kickoffs
An underrated strength of new kicker Jake Moody: kickoffs.
“He is extremely powerful, he has great hang time, he has great distance, so all those factor in,” special teams coordinator Brian Schneider said this week. “You start with hang time, distance and placement. Those are really the three things. And he’s exceptional in all of them.”
Moody’s frenzied, final field goal attempt during his pre-draft workout with Schneider is well-documented. Schneider, however, noted that he followed that up by asking Moody to put a couple of kickoffs in a very specific spot — just outside the numbers as close as possible to the goal line.
“The first one, he put a yard outside the numbers right on the goal line (with a) 4.38(-second) hang time, which is phenomenal,” he said. “And then his second one was two yards outside the hash, right on the goal line with 4.38 hang time. Right there, all those questions you have about how the guy responds to adversity? It just naturally happened at the workout and I was the only one there, so I was fired up.”
The question now becomes whether a kickoff ace like Moody is less important due to the new rule that puts the ball at the 25-yard line when the receiving team fair catches the kickoff anywhere inside its own 25-yard line.
Schneider said he wasn’t sure yet how he’d approach the new rule. He said he’ll study the tendencies in college football, which has had the rule for five seasons, and that the preseason games ought to hint at other teams’ strategies as well.
“For me, it’s more being prepared for our kickoff return team and trying to prepare them for whatever teams are going to try and do,” he said. “There’s been so many changes in the last 15 years on kickoff and kickoff return. When I started it was four-man wedge, three-man wedge, two-man wedge, one, illegal double-teams. There’s been, like, 20 rule (changes), so we’ll all adjust to it and we’ll figure it out.”
Brian Griese talks about the top three quarterbacks
Quarterbacks coach Brian Griese is still floored by the composure Brock Purdy showcased during his rookie season, but he made sure to temper his praise for the second-year QB.
“There are a lot of things Brock can and needs to get better at for this team to go where we want to go,” Griese said. “Brock and I, we’ve had that conversation. … I’m excited to get him back, get him healthy and see how good he can be.”
Griese wouldn’t delve into many specifics about targeted areas of improvement for Purdy, but he did mention efficiency from the pocket. That’s a skill that Kyle Shanahan previously stressed that Purdy, who surprised the 49ers and their opponents with his escapability last season, must improve moving forward.
Griese then lauded Trey Lance for how he handled the aftermath of his season-ending ankle fracture in Week 2.
“I was so proud of what he was able to accomplish because nobody wants to be in that situation,” Griese said. “Trey did everything he could possibly do last offseason to get healthy (from a 2021 finger fracture). I don’t think people realized how difficult that was for him, all the while going out every single day and trying to prove you can be the guy to lead the team.
“So to get hurt so early (in 2022), it’s devastating. It really is. I’m so proud of Trey, because it did get him down, but he didn’t let it keep him down. He came back, he was around the team — he impacted this team in a positive way. I could feel it in the quarterback room. I know Brock could feel it. I know the guys on offense could feel it. And that’s not a given at the quarterback position. You can slink away and just go lick your wounds and just go get healthy and come back next year, but that’s not who Trey Lance is. That’s why I told him I’m so proud of him of what he was able to accomplish off the field.”
Said Griese about Sam Darnold: “Sam has come in and he’s been about the work. He’s been through a lot in his career. I think everyone who knows football can see the skill set that Sam has. To me, it was, ‘Can we give him the structure and the stability upon which he can see how good of a player he can be?’
“I think our system, our offense is tailor-suited to a quarterback coming in and getting that footing, getting that stability. Sam has that opportunity now. We’ll see what he does with that opportunity.”
2 comments
SANTA CLARA, Calif. — What are the 49ers’ young running backs concentrating on this offseason? What sort of trickle-down effect does Javon Hargrave have on the rest of the defensive line? How will Ji’Ayir Brown be used in a secondary that already has two good safeties in Talanoa Hufanga and Tashaun Gipson Sr.?
The 49ers assistant coaches discussed those topics and more on Wednesday, which was a light day of OTAs — meetings but no on-field work — for the players. There was one newcomer in the group who spoke Wednesday. Klint Kubiak, the older brother of 49ers assistant quarterbacks coach Klay Kubiak, has taken over the passing game specialist position that Bobby Slowik, who is now the Texans’ offensive coordinator, had last season.
Two other assistants have new titles. Daniel Bullocks officially is the team’s defensive backs coach this year after serving as safeties coach previously. (He still primarily works with the safeties while defensive coordinator Steve Wilks mostly works with the cornerbacks.) Nick Sorensen is the defensive passing game specialist/nickels coach even though he mostly works with linebackers.
Young tailbacks adjusting to the Christian McCaffrey effect
Jordan Mason and Tyrion Davis-Price are big-bodied tailbacks who know how to throw their weight around in the running game.
Soft hands? That definitely wasn’t their forte when they were coming out of college last year. Davis-Price caught just 28 passes in three years at LSU. Mason had 26 catches in four seasons at Georgia Tech.
Christian McCaffrey’s arrival last year, however, has forced the youngsters to alter their games. As running backs coach Anthony Lynn explained, the 49ers offense is now set up to take advantage of McCaffrey’s gifts as both a runner and receiver. And that means the rest of the team’s tailbacks must shift accordingly.
“You don’t want to have two offenses,” he said. “You don’t want to have Christian come out for a water break and have the next guy come in and have to call (different) plays. So our guys have had to evolve and do more in the passing game.”
As a result, route running and pass catching are a major emphasis for the running back group this season. Mason, in particular, has seemed to make strides. He’s caught a lot of passes in the two practices that have been open to reporters so far. And while Davis-Price had a drop last week, he had a long reception on a nice touch pass from Brandon Allen in Wednesday’s session.
“It’s very new to them,” Lynn said. “They are two big guys who can run. And both of them are more comfortable now in what we’re doing. It’s night and day to me right now.”
What Javon Hargrave means for Javon Kinlaw
The summary 49ers defensive line coach Kris Kocurek gave on Thursday was a succinct one.
“Everyone knows our philosophy on D-linemen here at the Niners,” Kocurek said. “The more, the merrier.”
So when Kocurek submitted his evaluations of this year’s available free agents at the position to the 49ers’ scouting department, he sat back and hoped that the 49ers would land the biggest fish on his list. That was former Eagles’ defensive tackle Hargrave, considered by many to be the top 2023 defensive free agent on the open market.
“Paraag (Marathe) and the front office does their work and figures out if it can fit or not,” Kocurek said. “I just keep my fingers crossed and hope that it can.”
Kocurek’s wish came true when the 49ers bucked expectations and signed Hargrave to a four-year deal worth up to $84 million.
“Just one more piece of the puzzle — a very talented piece of the puzzle, obviously,” Kocurek said. “I’ve followed Javon throughout his career and he’s always been a really, really, really good player. And I think the past couple of years in Philly, he’s really separated himself from a lot of the interior players in the game — especially from a pass rush standpoint, in terms of being able to pressure the quarterback and win one-on-ones at a really high rate. There’s only a couple other names in the NFL who have won at the rate that he’s won.”
Suddenly, perhaps the 49ers’ biggest weakness of 2022 — the interior defensive line — looks like a strength. The addition of Hargrave means that Javon Kinlaw can move into a second-string rotational role, which the 49ers believe will be beneficial to the fourth-year man’s bid to finally stay healthy. Kinlaw is in the midst of what can become his first fully available offseason with the 49ers (he was still rehabbing from knee surgery at this time last year).
“This is the first offseason since we’ve had (Kinlaw) that he’s been able to start the offseason healthy and actually stack days on top of each other,” Kocurek said. “We’ve been going for a while now and he’s been continuously stacking days. He’s getting himself more ready to play this offseason than at any point of his career. It’s all been really positive. I’m looking forward to it.”
Nick Sorensen on the new wave of linebackers
Rookie linebacker Jalen Graham ran a pedestrian 4.64-second 40-yard dash in the run-up to the draft, which likely contributed to him lasting until the tail end of the seventh round.
Speed, however, hasn’t been an issue for Graham or any of the team’s young linebackers in recent practices.
“He’s been doing really well,” Sorensen said. “He flies around.”
Graham is one of several 49ers linebackers who technically weren’t linebackers in college. He played the so-called “star” position at Purdue, which is a quasi safety-linebacker spot. The player might stuff the line of scrimmage on first down, cover a tight end on second down and blitz the quarterback on third.
Fred Warner and Marcelino McCrary-Ball played similar positions at BYU and Indiana, respectively. Another linebacker, Demetrius Flannigan-Fowles, played a hybrid safety spot at Arizona.
“It’s the guys who play out in space,” Sorensen said. “And there’s a lot of that in college.”
The position has different names at different schools. But it’s usually a spot for a playmaker who’s smart and who can run — which is a top requirement for a 49ers linebacker.
“It’s, ‘OK, you’re 212-215 (pounds) in college, can we get you into the low 220s and then mid 220s?’” Sorensen said. “It’s a position that fits our scheme.”
Ji’Ayir Brown being eyed for three-safety sets
Newly-promoted 49ers DB coach Daniel Bullocks, who continues to specialize in working with the team’s safeties, has been impressed with Brown.
The rookie safety from Penn State, who led all 2023 draft-eligible players with 10 interceptions over the past two seasons, has four picks already in OTAs with the 49ers. He dropped a potential fifth interception.
“When you look at a guy like who has 10 career interceptions in college — usually, the guys who are always around the football are going to get the football,” Bullocks said. “And it really doesn’t stop when they get to the NFL. They’re usually around the ball as well.”
The 49ers, of course, already have two very good veteran safeties in Hufanga and Gipson. But they plan to deploy Brown early in his career through the use of three-safety sets, and they believe such formations will be made possible by the rookie’s adaptability.
“He has our DNA that we’re looking for on defense,” Bullocks said. “We’re looking for a guy that’s physical, that’s smart, that can finish. When you look at Ji’Ayir, he’s versatile. He can line up on all three levels of the defense. He can line up on the line of scrimmage. He can rush off the edge. He can drop back a level and play man coverage. He can play zone as well. And he can also drop back into the post and show that range and go get the football.”
Brian Schneider taking wait-and-see approach with kickoffs
An underrated strength of new kicker Jake Moody: kickoffs.
“He is extremely powerful, he has great hang time, he has great distance, so all those factor in,” special teams coordinator Brian Schneider said this week. “You start with hang time, distance and placement. Those are really the three things. And he’s exceptional in all of them.”
Moody’s frenzied, final field goal attempt during his pre-draft workout with Schneider is well-documented. Schneider, however, noted that he followed that up by asking Moody to put a couple of kickoffs in a very specific spot — just outside the numbers as close as possible to the goal line.
“The first one, he put a yard outside the numbers right on the goal line (with a) 4.38(-second) hang time, which is phenomenal,” he said. “And then his second one was two yards outside the hash, right on the goal line with 4.38 hang time. Right there, all those questions you have about how the guy responds to adversity? It just naturally happened at the workout and I was the only one there, so I was fired up.”
The question now becomes whether a kickoff ace like Moody is less important due to the new rule that puts the ball at the 25-yard line when the receiving team fair catches the kickoff anywhere inside its own 25-yard line.
Schneider said he wasn’t sure yet how he’d approach the new rule. He said he’ll study the tendencies in college football, which has had the rule for five seasons, and that the preseason games ought to hint at other teams’ strategies as well.
“For me, it’s more being prepared for our kickoff return team and trying to prepare them for whatever teams are going to try and do,” he said. “There’s been so many changes in the last 15 years on kickoff and kickoff return. When I started it was four-man wedge, three-man wedge, two-man wedge, one, illegal double-teams. There’s been, like, 20 rule (changes), so we’ll all adjust to it and we’ll figure it out.”
Brian Griese talks about the top three quarterbacks
Quarterbacks coach Brian Griese is still floored by the composure Brock Purdy showcased during his rookie season, but he made sure to temper his praise for the second-year QB.
“There are a lot of things Brock can and needs to get better at for this team to go where we want to go,” Griese said. “Brock and I, we’ve had that conversation. … I’m excited to get him back, get him healthy and see how good he can be.”
Griese wouldn’t delve into many specifics about targeted areas of improvement for Purdy, but he did mention efficiency from the pocket. That’s a skill that Kyle Shanahan previously stressed that Purdy, who surprised the 49ers and their opponents with his escapability last season, must improve moving forward.
Griese then lauded Trey Lance for how he handled the aftermath of his season-ending ankle fracture in Week 2.
“I was so proud of what he was able to accomplish because nobody wants to be in that situation,” Griese said. “Trey did everything he could possibly do last offseason to get healthy (from a 2021 finger fracture). I don’t think people realized how difficult that was for him, all the while going out every single day and trying to prove you can be the guy to lead the team.
“So to get hurt so early (in 2022), it’s devastating. It really is. I’m so proud of Trey, because it did get him down, but he didn’t let it keep him down. He came back, he was around the team — he impacted this team in a positive way. I could feel it in the quarterback room. I know Brock could feel it. I know the guys on offense could feel it. And that’s not a given at the quarterback position. You can slink away and just go lick your wounds and just go get healthy and come back next year, but that’s not who Trey Lance is. That’s why I told him I’m so proud of him of what he was able to accomplish off the field.”
Said Griese about Sam Darnold: “Sam has come in and he’s been about the work. He’s been through a lot in his career. I think everyone who knows football can see the skill set that Sam has. To me, it was, ‘Can we give him the structure and the stability upon which he can see how good of a player he can be?’
“I think our system, our offense is tailor-suited to a quarterback coming in and getting that footing, getting that stability. Sam has that opportunity now. We’ll see what he does with that opportunity.”