{"id":752348,"date":"2026-07-09T10:18:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T10:18:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/752348\/"},"modified":"2026-07-09T10:18:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T10:18:15","slug":"the-49ers-breakout-candidate-in-2026-is-also-their-secret-weapon-on-defense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/752348\/","title":{"rendered":"The 49ers\u2019 breakout candidate in 2026 is also their secret weapon on defense"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup _1bij9g78 _1mt21p01\">The 49ers\u2019 defense was young, raw and outmatched for much of last season, so it can be tough to find the diamond in the rough. But that diamond is Stout, a third-rounder who started in the slot &#8212; a taxing position to master mentally &#8212; and kept his head above water.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup _1bij9g78 _1mt21p01\">Stout got burned plenty as a risk taker, but he didn\u2019t make the same mistakes over and over again. He\u2019ll never dominate with pass breakups given his 5-foot-9, 181-pound size, but he has stopping power as a tackler and creates opportunities for his teammates to finish off run plays by penetrating and disrupting. He\u2019ll stick around in the league for a long, long time as he fully gets up to the mental speed of the game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 49ers\u2019 defense was young, raw and outmatched for much of last season, so it can be tough&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":752349,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,173680,2745,99],"class_list":["post-752348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-san-francisco-49ers-analysis","tag-san-francisco-49ers-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=752348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/752349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=752348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=752348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=752348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}