The San Francisco 49ers will enter the 2026 season with a new defensive coordinator and several new players that they acquired through free agency, trades and this year’s NFL draft.<\/p>\n
The changes that San Francisco made should help them get back to the playoffs this year after sneaking in, knocking out the Philadelphia Eagles in the wild-card round and losing in the divisional round to the eventual Super Bowl champions.<\/p>\n
Before we get there, ESPN’s Mike Clay identified the team’s biggest strength for their 2026 season as their quarterback room.<\/p>\n
“I could’ve gone a few directions here, but\u00a0Brock Purdy’s continued strong play, coupled with\u00a0Mac Jones’ solid performance in relief duty last season, is enough to push quarterback to the top,” Clay wrote. “Durability has\u00a0been an issue\u00a0for Purdy, but his efficiency has been elite, as he has finished his three seasons as a starter ranked first, seventh and, most recently, second in QBR. He threw 20 TDs in only nine games last season — a pace matched only by Matthew Stafford.”<\/p>\n
While their biggest strength is something that the 49ers hope that they’ll never have to rely on, their biggest weakness, according to Clay, is their interior defensive line, which will obviously be impactful on every snap.<\/p>\n
“This is the same concern area as last year, and the 49ers went on to finish 31st in pressures (157) and last in sacks (20) in 2025,” Clay wrote. “Some help\u00a0was added\u00a0in the form of\u00a0Osa Odighizuwa, who was effective while playing 62% of Dallas’ defensive snaps during his first five pro seasons. Behind him are second-year players\u00a0Alfred Collins\u00a0and\u00a0C.J. West, who tied for the second-worst PFF grade among 115 qualified defensive tackles last season, and fourth-round rookie\u00a0Gracen Halton.”<\/p>\n
San Francisco has invested a lot into the defensive line group by trading for Odighizuwa this offseason and taking both Collins and West in the draft last year. Even last year’s first-round pick Mykel Williams can play some inside if needed.<\/p>\n
That group needs to show up and show out in 2026. It’s great that they’ll have Fred Warner and Dre Greenlaw back again to fill in behind them, but they can’t rely on the veteran linebackers or edge rushers to accomplish everything.<\/p>\n
More 49ers: See where 49ers players land on ESPN’s fantasy sleepers and busts list<\/p>\n
This article originally appeared on Niners Wire: NFL analyst breaks down 49ers biggest strength, weakness in 2026<\/p>\n
Reporting by Mike Masala, Niners Wire \/ Niners Wire<\/p>\n
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The San Francisco 49ers will enter the 2026 season with a new defensive coordinator and several new players…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":388386,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[1818,752,128946,101,296,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-388385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-49ers","tag-nfl","tag-niners","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-49ers","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388385\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/388386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}