SEATTLE — Rookie Gracen Halton was giddy holding his friend’s iPhone in the 49ers’ locker room, where “Down Under” — the team’s victory theme song since its Week 1 triumph in Australia — blared.
The phone belonged to fellow defensive tackle Sebastian Valdez, a second-year player, and it replayed Halton’s Superman moment. Halton watched with a massive grin as he reviewed his end-of-half destruction of Seattle center Jalen Sundell, his flying punch-out against running back George Holani, and his fumble recovery in the end zone that fueled a 32-29 victory.
“I was an athlete in high school, now,” Halton said shortly after reliving the most simultaneously destructive and acrobatic play a 293-pounder can make. “But hey, I was running back, tight end, wide receiver — everything. A lot of people don’t know. But now, I’m going back to my D-line roots.”
Halton, a 2026 fourth-round pick out of Oklahoma, delivered the one play that was perhaps most emblematic of this 15-round prize fight between two of the NFL’s true titans. There are plenty to choose from, as this might rank among the highest-scoring defensive battles in league history — a product of two ferocious defenses combining to force seven takeaways and create plentiful short fields.
The 49ers, who’d generated only three takeaways over the month entering this game, turned the Seahawks over four times Sunday. Halton’s was the most majestic. The rookie’s get-off was so rapid that he somehow disrupted a handoff behind the goal line even though the line of scrimmage was at the 4-yard line.
“And then I felt my hand touch the ball,” Halton said. “As I fell to the ground, I heard people screaming — and all my emotions took over after that. All I heard was the crowd. So I just flipped around, and the ball was right there.”
Call it the touchdown that formally announced the arrival of the 49ers’ next-generation pass rush.
Without superstar Nick Bosa, who might return as soon as the Oct. 19 Monday night matchup against the Washington Commanders, the 49ers have seen a real-time blossoming of their young defensive linemen.
The team had seven players record at least two pressures Sunday as it finished with five sacks and a 97th-percentile pressure rate of 51.4%. The performance built on the prior week’s showing against the Denver Broncos, when the 49ers roughed up quarterback Bo Nix en route to a 24-14 victory.
“I can’t say I’ve seen it coming,” left tackle Trent Williams said. “But you see [Romello Height], you see how many plays he has been close to affecting the game every week. You see G-Baby [Halton]. Getting Mykel [Williams] back in the fold. Keion [White] has been playing lights-out. The D-line is not a lot of household names outside of Bosa, but the way they play with their hair on fire, it’s a very special group.”
The unit is excited to get Bosa, who’s long been the straw who stirs the drink, back.
“Just imagine,” rookie Romello Height said, “all of what we’ll be able to do.”
Several defensive linemen — including veteran Osa Odighizuwa, who notched his first sack of the season after delivering four weeks of relentless pressure — agreed in the locker room that the star edge rusher’s return could lift the 49ers’ defense to a level it hasn’t reached in several years.
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Under coach Kyle Shanahan, the 49ers fielded great pass rushes in 2019 and 2022. But they’d never roared the way they have the past two weeks without Bosa. Whenever he’s been out, the defensive drop-off has been significant. Now, though, things are conspicuously different.
“You’ve got to think of the adversity we’ve fought through, right?” star linebacker Fred Warner said. “All of our Day 1 starting defensive line is out. You lose Bosa, and you’re looking at, ‘Man, what’s the defense going to be?’ And you just can’t speak to how important those guys are who have stepped in those roles and produced big-time.”
It’s fitting that, on Halton’s strip-and-score, White blew up right tackle Abraham Lucas — that’s who Bosa beat to strip-sack quarterback Sam Darnold and seal a Week 1 win at Seattle last season. Height collapsed the line from the other side. The 49ers overwhelmed the Seahawks as their defense allowed only 4.2 yards per play.
The wins up front enabled the 49ers to execute their game plan on the back end. They knew Darnold was prone to putting the ball in harm’s way, and they knew the Seahawks were disproportionately reliant on receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba.
That’s a risky combination for any offense, and cornerback Renardo Green capitalized with two interceptions.
Green’s success might have been the most symbolically satisfying for the 49ers, who were playing on the same field that hosted their demise last season. The Seahawks had beaten an injury-decimated 49ers team 41-6, and a lasting image from that game was of Shanahan berating Green on the sideline for blowing a coverage.
It was constructive criticism that paid off about nine months later.
“We’ve got really great coaches,” Green said. “They push us hard. My confidence came from myself already, but when you’ve got a mind like Kyle and his resume and you hear it, it just lets you know that you are one of the ones.”
Green, after that rough finish to last season, has emerged as one of the leaders of what’s been a top-flight NFL secondary. And that means he’s now a bona fide spokesman for these resilient 49ers — whom Shanahan called “a bunch of warriors” after the win.
Renardo Green intercepts a Sam Darnold pass during the first quarter of Sunday’s game between the 49ers and Seahawks. | Source: Sean Fan/The Standard
“When you’re out there, it’s your time to play,” Green said. “We don’t care who’s out there, it doesn’t matter who’s out there — we’re all held to the same standard. That’s how the players hold each other accountable and that’s how our coaches push us. It doesn’t surprise me the young guys are making plays. We do it in practice. We did it in camp. We were doing it in preseason. And we just knew we were gonna get our opps.”
Such quotes are often clichéd lip service in the NFL. But not in the case of these 49ers, who’ve now beaten three of the four conference championship participants from last season — even while being the league’s most injured team so far.
They’re 5-0. They’re winning critical games even with loads of star power watching on the couch back in the Bay Area (opens in new tab), and they’re smiling at their phones in the locker room after.
There were plenty of sensational plays to admire, and they all defined another riveting chapter of the 49ers-Seahawks rivalry.