Seattle Seahawks<\/a> used a first-round pick on Byron Murphy in 2024, and he finished the season with more missed tackles than tackles for loss and quarterback hits.<\/p>\nThe Commanders drafted Jer\u2019Zhan Newton at the top of the second round, and he finished the season with two sacks. Most players take a leap in their second season after flashing as rookies. Exceptions to the rule came in the NFC West, with Jared Verse and Braden Fiske. Verse has DPOY potential, while Fiske had 8.5 sacks and 45 pressures.<\/p>\n
What can we expect from West? If he has a stat line or trajectory close to T\u2019Vondre Sweat, an early second-round pick in 2024, the 49ers would be head over heels. Sweat had 51 tackles and 21 pressures at nose tackle. That also feels like an outlier season.<\/p>\n
West will presumably have an opportunity to see the field early and often. He\u2019s competing with UDFA Evan Anderson and journeyman Jordan Elliott. West received high praise last week from defensive line coach Kris Kocurek, who said West was \u201cadvanced for where he\u2019s at this stage in his career.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Jets played an undrafted free agent rookie at defensive tackle last season, who might be the best comparison for who West could turn out to be as a rookie. Lenoard Taylor III had 24 tackles, eight QB hits, and 11 pressures as a rookie. That would be a \u201cwin\u201d for the 49ers if West turned in that kind of production.<\/p>\n
West played five years of college ball. According to Sports Info Solutions metrics, he improved as a player every season, including this past year when he took the jump from Indiana to Kent State. That experience will help West.<\/p>\n
The best defenses during the Kyle Shanahan era were stout down the spine. That has not been the case in the previous two seasons. You could argue the Niners haven\u2019t been the same against the run since D.J. Jones left after the 2021 season. Jones, a Day 3 pick, did the dirty work by eating blockers and freeing up linebackers behind him. If West can develop into that kind of player, the run defense should transform back into the unit it was when Robert Saleh was in his first stint with the 49ers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We\u2019re finally kicking off our 90-in-90 series for 2025. We\u2019ll do things a little differently this year by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":116944,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2080],"tags":[220,6428,1131,11190,7,23,29,723,28,6,1136,28877,2583,396,1161,252,1137,1139,2624,2623,189,11489,1588],"class_list":{"0":"post-116943","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco-49ers","8":"tag-49ers","9":"tag-cj","10":"tag-ers","11":"tag-expectations","12":"tag-football","13":"tag-for","14":"tag-front-page","15":"tag-in","16":"tag-nation","17":"tag-nfl","18":"tag-niners","19":"tag-reasonable","20":"tag-rookie","21":"tag-s","22":"tag-san-francisco","23":"tag-san-francisco-49ers","24":"tag-san-francisco-49ers-news","25":"tag-san-francisco-roster","26":"tag-sanfrancisco","27":"tag-sanfrancisco49ers","28":"tag-season","29":"tag-setting","30":"tag-west"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114655337316285151","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116943\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}