{"id":726186,"date":"2026-02-03T12:14:18","date_gmt":"2026-02-03T12:14:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/726186\/"},"modified":"2026-02-03T12:14:18","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T12:14:18","slug":"golden-nuggets-the-49ers-go-abroad-in-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/726186\/","title":{"rendered":"Golden Nuggets: The 49ers go abroad in 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

49ers expect to give up home game to play internationally in 2026<\/a>
\u201cSo far, the league has confirmed the following locations for international games during the 2026 regular season:<\/p>\n

Melbourne, Australia (Melbourne Cricket Ground) \u2014 Los Angeles Rams participating<\/p>\n

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Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (Maracan\u00e3 Stadium)<\/p>\n

Munich, Germany (FC Bayern Munich Arena)<\/p>\n

London, England \u2014 three games<\/p>\n

Madrid, Spain (Bernab\u00e9u Stadium)\u201d<\/p>\n

Is 49ers\u2019 defense facing a difficult adjustment with hiring of Raheem Morris?<\/a>
\u201cMorris, 49, has dabbled and evolved through the years, and he\u2019s hard to pigeonhole when it comes to his defensive philosophy. Still, Morris and Wilks are now the only coordinators among the six hires Shanahan has made who aren\u2019t students of the Seattle-style 4-3 defense that former\u00a0Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll began to popularize more than 15 years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hutchinson: Kyle Shanahan got his ruthless pragmatist<\/a>
\u201cMorris is far closer to a polyglot than a dogmatist.<\/p>\n

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This is someone who has that same foundation as Robert Saleh. It\u2019s the Cover-3, Legion of Boom basis that\u2019s mostly gone the way of the dodo. *Coughs in Gus Bradley*<\/p>\n

Morris leaned on that from 2015-20 with Quinn in Atlanta, before running a 3-4 and 5-man \u201cpenny\u201d fronts and a healthy dose of Cover-4 and Cover-6 with the Rams. He also did an effective job with their young group when they hit the reset the following year. He opted for these fronts with Aaron Donald as his paradigm-shifting nose tackle and a still-cooking Von Miller on the edge.<\/p>\n

He failed his first year in Atlanta trying to continue that 3-4-heavy basis, and canned his own defensive coordinator, Jimmy Lake. He took a back seat this past year, allowing Jeff Ulbrich to reform the scheme similar to what the 49ers\u2019 ran \u2014 part of why the 49ers got their run game going against Atlanta (see: below) \u2014 with a mostly 4-3 over setup and the Wide 9.<\/p>\n

Atlanta didn\u2019t quite have the horses on defense, and the main, valid criticism of Morris is that he\u2019s never had a top-10 defense by the numbers. But the Falcons, a team with 31 sacks in 2024, set a franchise record with 57 sacks last season \u2014 second in the NFL \u2014 and they wreaked havoc before falling apart in the run game in the second half of the season after the 49ers showed their weaknesses.<\/p>\n

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Morris is a pragmatist. He is as experienced a 49-year-old coach as you\u2019ll ever find.<\/p>\n

For a defense that Saleh had a lot of fun experimenting with early, the communication on the back end was diabolically bad at times. Once injuries set in, it led to a sharp regression. It\u2019s part of the reason Ji\u2019Ayir Brown went from bit player to starter. He communicated in a secondary that didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Morris speaking multiple defensive languages and having experience working with young secondaries sets this up for someone who can not just command respect from young players, but communicate effectively\u2026 and ideally, teach them to do the same.<\/p>\n

As for that front, Morris used the Wide 9 last year. And he also saw the weaknesses of it, particularly if your defensive tackles aren\u2019t protecting your linebackers.<\/p>\n

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He\u2019ll see what Saleh experimented with early. It\u2019s actually not too hard to imagine the 49ers using their variety of chess pieces with different fronts.<\/p>\n

If they played around with a tite front (4i-0-4i), they\u2019ve got a perfect 4i in Mykel Williams and a similar counterpart in Keion White, with Alfred Collins also feasible. CJ West is a stellar nose tackle option. And then Nick Bosa and Bryce Huff or Sam Okuayianonu at the edge? That\u2019s enticing.\u201c<\/p>\n

49ers, Kyle Shanahan lose another top assistant to Titans
<\/a>\u201cAs expected, the Tennessee Titans have made a move to hire San Francisco 49ers assistant head coach Gus Bradley, bringing him on as their new defensive coordinator.\u201d<\/p>\n

49ers defensive assistant expected to join Packers<\/a>
\u201cAccording to Matt Zenitz of CBS Sports, the Green Bay Packers are expected to hire Bullocks for a role on head coach Matt LaFleur\u2019s staff.\u201d<\/p>\n

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49ers macro minute: Mac Jones and Brock Purdy split the season. Who came out on top? (paywall)<\/a>
\u201cStout seemed to get stronger as the year went on and ended up as the team\u2019s top rookie. Over the full season, quarterbacks had a 97.1 passer rating when targeting him. But that rating was just 74.9 over the last eight games. He allowed one touchdown (versus the Giants) and finished third on the team in tackles (82) behind linebackers Winters and Bethune.\u201d<\/p>\n

CBS Sports links 49ers to Joey Bosa, other key NFL free agents<\/a>
\u201cCBS Sports analyst Zachary Pereles recently\u00a0examined the upcoming free-agent market, identifying the 49ers as a top landing spot for\u00a0Joey Bosa, the older brother of star edge rusher\u00a0Nick Bosa.\u201d<\/p>\n

49ers go in unexpected direction in latest NFL.com 2026 mock draft<\/a>
\u201cSadiq (6-3, 245) is the first tight end off the board in Zierlein\u2019s projection. Fellow NFL draft analyst Daniel Jeremiah also mocked Sadiq to the 49ers in his own projection, suggesting there may be growing consensus around the fit.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"49ers expect to give up home game to play internationally in 2026\u201cSo far, the league has confirmed the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":726187,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2080],"tags":[220,4094,583,390,223,2644,6731,2792,7,592,13139,5736,7900,2812,58,5215,104836,4588,41604,1493,6,1515,428,2663,6043,1161,252,2624,2623,394,7958],"class_list":["post-726186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco-49ers","tag-49ers","tag-aaron-donald","tag-alfred-collins","tag-arizona-cardinals","tag-atlanta","tag-brock-purdy","tag-bryce-huff","tag-defensive-coordinator","tag-football","tag-fred-warner","tag-gus-bradley","tag-joey-bosa","tag-keion-white","tag-kyle-shanahan","tag-los-angeles-rams","tag-mac-jones","tag-melbourne-cricket-ground","tag-mexico","tag-mexico-city","tag-mykel-williams","tag-nfl","tag-nick-bosa","tag-packers","tag-raheem-morris","tag-robert-saleh","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-49ers","tag-sanfrancisco","tag-sanfrancisco49ers","tag-tennessee-titans","tag-von-miller"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726186","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=726186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726186\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/726187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=726186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=726186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=726186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}