For all the offensive firepower San Francisco still carries, the defining storyline for the 49ers as they push toward January has quietly, and consistently, been their inability to affect opposing quarterbacks.
Through 13 games, the Niners have just 18 sacks as a team — 1.2 a ballgame — the worst in football.
And the tape backs up the numbers: Quarterbacks are simply too comfortable, too clean, and too unbothered.
It isn’t as if the 49ers lack bodies — they lack disruption and execution. Bryce Huff leads the team with 36 pressures and five sacks, admirable production for a veteran presence who was never meant to be the focal point. Behind him, though, the picture gets even murkier. Sam Okuayinonu has flashed effort but isn’t consistent finishing. Rookie Mykel Williams sits at 19 pressures but tore his ACL, stalling the developmental rhythm they desperately needed from him. Jordan Elliott and Clelin Ferrell — Elliott with 11 pressures, Ferrell also with 11 despite playing only four games — illustrate the broader problem: small flashes, minimal impact, no true closer.
It’s everything the 49ers once weren’t. In past playoff pushes, they suffocated opponents by collapsing pockets and dictating game flow. This year, quarterbacks have dictated to them.
You can track the losses directly back to the pass rush’s absence — they couldn’t touch Matthew Stafford in a 42–26 loss to the Los Angeles Rams. They let the Texans‘ C.J. Stroud carve them up in Houston. They didn’t stress the Buccaneers’ Baker Mayfield in Tampa Bay.
Every one of those losses featured the same script: minimal pressure and clean throwing lanes for signal-callers.
It only became more dire after losing Nick Bosa and Fred Warner, two forces who defined how Robert Saleh’s defense functioned. Bosa was the finisher, Warner the perfectly timed delayed blitzer who changed the math for an offense.
Remove them, though, and San Francisco has to find new answers, and fast.
So the looming question — maybe the question — surrounding the 49ers heading into the final stretch is simple: Who steps up? Is it Huff carrying the load? Can Okuayinonu or Elliott win enough one-on-ones? Does rookie Alfred Collins unlock something within the interior? Or does Saleh have to get creative with disguised pressure packages from linebackers, nickels, and safeties?
Because what the 49ers can’t do is try to win playoff games playing 7-on-7 defense and hoping Brock Purdy and the offense can repeatedly score 30-plus to survive. In all, their postseason path hinges on one unit waking up.
And fast.