{"id":493763,"date":"2026-10-12T18:12:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-12T18:12:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/493763\/"},"modified":"2026-10-12T18:12:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-12T18:12:11","slug":"49ers-gambled-by-drafting-jaden-dugger-it-paid-off-big-in-seattle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/493763\/","title":{"rendered":"49ers gambled by drafting Jaden Dugger. It paid off big in Seattle"},"content":{"rendered":"

The NFL draft is a multibillion-dollar, months-long pageant where countless folks in team-issued polo shirts spend months grinding tape, measuring hands, breaking down 40-yard splits and projecting the futures of players and the league<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And even after all of that, quite often teams discover<\/a> they drafted fool\u2019s gold.<\/p>\n

But every once in a while, the opposite happens and a total shot in the dark turns out to be a heat-seeking missile.<\/p>\n

When the San Francisco 49ers<\/a> drafted Jaden Dugger, I had countless questions. He didn\u2019t have a steady position in college. He didn\u2019t seem to particularly stand out at any of the positions he played. He was at Louisiana-Lafayette, playing in the Sun Belt Conference and he wasn\u2019t dominating Middle Tennessee or Texas State. How on earth was this going to work in the NFL?<\/p>\n

The preseason only amplified my skepticism.<\/p>\n

He looked slow to process \u2014 a project who would spend his first year watching on the sidelines or in the press box. He looked like just another assistant-coach-made pick on Day 3 for a Niners team that treats the final rounds of the draft the same way modern power hitters approach at-bats: a lot of swing and miss.<\/p>\n

But sometimes those power hitters get ahold of one and it goes a long, long way.<\/p>\n

Sunday might have been one of those magic moments.<\/p>\n

In the biggest game of the season, in as tough an environment as there is in the NFL, Dugger was asked to do more than he has ever done before as a professional.<\/p>\n

He responded by being downright stupendous \u2014 a true standout on a field littered with the best defensive players in the NFL.<\/p>\n

The 49ers decided to spend a chunk of the afternoon in base defense against the Seahawks. Four down linemen, three stack linebackers behind them. In the NFL in 2026, playing base qualifies as exotic counter-culture.<\/p>\n

Dugger made it look like the future.<\/p>\n

Playing as a stack SAM linebacker, he was exceptional. He read the field cleanly, sifted through traffic with square pads and stopped the Seahawks\u2019 run game dead in its tracks again and again.<\/p>\n

And it all started with the ghost move. It\u2019s how you knew something special was brewing.<\/p>\n

Early in the first quarter, Dugger, lined up on the line of scrimmage \u2014 the classic overhang SAM \u2014 squared up Seattle right tackle Abe Lucas, and hit him with a shoulder deke, quick hands and a massive, tone-setting sack. If you watched his college tape, you\u2019d know it\u2019s basically the only pass-rush trick in his bag, but when you can pull it off like that, one trick is plenty.<\/p>\n

\"SanSan Francisco 49ers linebacker Jaden Dugger (53) sacks Seattle Seahawks quarterback Sam Darnold (14) during the first half of an NFL football game Sunday, Oct. 11, 2026, in Seattle. (AP Photo\/Stephen Brashear)\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yes, things were going great for Dugger and the 49ers\u2019 defense early.<\/p>\n

But, of course, because it\u2019s a 49ers-Seahawks game in Seattle, the afternoon could not, would not stay orderly.<\/p>\n

Dre Greenlaw, while being surrounded by 20-odd opponents on the Seattle sideline, saw a helmetless Ernest Jones IV and thought, \u201cThat looks like a target,\u201d headbutting his Seattle counterpart. It earned him an ejection so obvious that not even the wildest corner of the internet could complain.<\/p>\n

Suddenly, Dugger was thrust into action as the team\u2019s top weak-side linebacker.<\/p>\n

Truth be told, he was not nearly as clean there.<\/p>\n

He was washed out of a couple of run plays \u2014 there was a play where he ended up so far out of position he practically needed a transit pass to get back to the hashmark.<\/p>\n

Yet he shook off the duds and delivered enough rock-solid stops to more than even the ledger.<\/p>\n

When you get thrown into the deep end against a divisional rival on the road, taking a few mouthfuls of water is fine as long as you don\u2019t drown. Dugger definitely stayed afloat.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought Dugger did an awesome job stepping it up,\u201d Kyle Shanahan said. \u201cWhen you lose a guy like Dre, and Dugger starting in base but having to come and play that much more in nickel with Dre going out\u2026 it\u2019s really hard to win a game in that situation if those guys don\u2019t step it up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Credit defensive coordinator Raheem Morris and linebackers coach K.J. Wright, who never blinked in their belief in the uber-athletic ball of clay from the Pittsburgh area.<\/p>\n

While skeptics like me were ready to bury the pick, the coaching staff remained steadfast and adamant.<\/p>\n

And, of course, the real credit needs to go to Dugger, who, despite a steep learning curve, kept developing and rewarding that trust.<\/p>\n

There is still plenty of room for improvement. He is raw, he has blind spots, and NFL offensive coordinators will hunt him the second they find a matchup they like. We saw that in the second half Sunday.<\/p>\n

But his ceiling is sky-high, and Sunday was the case in point.<\/p>\n

At the same time, he proved against Seattle that his floor is significantly higher than expected.<\/p>\n

That is the charm of this league. Every time you think you have something pegged, sports finds a way to smack you across the face with a surprise.<\/p>\n

And in a game with plenty of shocks \u2014 too many shocks, perhaps \u2014 Dugger stood tallest among them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NFL draft is a multibillion-dollar, months-long pageant where countless folks in team-issued polo shirts spend months grinding…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":493764,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[402,12268,181,752,101,296,103,102,104,106,105,127,1326],"class_list":["post-493763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-inside-sports","tag-inside-the-san-francisco-49ers","tag-latest-headlines","tag-nfl","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-49ers","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news","tag-sports","tag-sports-columnists"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493763","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=493763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493763\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/493764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=493763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=493763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=493763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}