Your daily San Francisco 49ers news for Wednesday, January 8th, 2025
Report: Nick Sorensen will not return as 49ers’ defensive coordinator
“According to Matt Maiocco of NBC Sports Bay Area, the 49ers plan to remove Sorensen from his current post. However, Maiocco notes that the organization hopes to retain Sorensen in a different capacity within head coach Kyle Shanahan’s staff.”
Offseason shadow: 49ers’ Brock Purdy, Ricky Pearsall to make up for lost time (paywall)
“Purdy likes to spend part of his offseason with his throwing coach in the Jacksonville, Fla. area. It just so happens that Pearsall, who played at the University of Florida, plans to do some speed training in the vicinity in the coming months
Finally, both said they’ll spend the bulk of the offseason at the team facility in Santa Clara. Even there, their lockers are only a few feet apart……Pearsall said he plans to work on every facet of receiving in the offseason. He felt his biggest shortcoming as a rookie was that he didn’t have a deep understanding of the playbook. He said he doesn’t merely want to know where to go on a particular play. He wants to know exactly what the quarterback is thinking, something he hopes to get in an offseason with Purdy.
”It always starts there — that’s the way you’re going to move the fastest,” he said. “It doesn’t matter how much route running or footwork drills you do, if you don’t know the playbook — the ins and outs of it — you’re not going to play fast.”
(paywall)
“The 49ers have to replenish their defensive line, which has been the driving force for much of their success during the Kyle Shanahan/John Lynch era,” Reid explained. “Stewart is a toolsy defensive lineman who is likely to see his stock skyrocket at pre-draft events because of his athletic skills and 6-foot-6, 290-pound frame.”
Through three seasons with the Aggies, Stewart has recorded 65 tackles (12 for a loss), 4.5 sacks, four passes defensed, and one forced fumble. In 2024, he earned a career-best 79.4 defensive grade from Pro Football Focus and an impressive 88.9 run-defense grade. He also ranked second on the team with 33 pressures during the season.
“He has been more potential than production to date, as he’s never had more than 1.5 sacks in a season,” Reid continued. “But Stewart’s 2.42-second average time to first pressure is the best among all defensive linemen in the FBS, which shows that he just needs to learn how to finish his pressures with sacks.”
Identifying what went wrong for 49ers in disastrous 2024 season
“Perhaps, as a result, the 49ers’ training camp was severely lacking. Without Greenlaw, McCaffrey, Williams and Aiyuk on the field, things were not crisp, focused or particularly intense.”
Could 49ers firing Schneider signal a fresh start for Moody?
“That means, he likely will face competition throughout the offseason and in training camp. Moody will have to prove to somebody not responsible for bringing him to the organization that he is the best person for this job.
In that sense, it becomes a fresh start for Moody.
He no longer is on scholarship, and the ultimate decision-maker on who kicks for the 49ers next season will not feel any pressure to lean heavily toward the team’s third-round draft pick.
Moody’s lack of consistency is not the sole reason Shanahan parted ways with Schneider.
The 49ers had issues in every imaginable way on special teams this season with turnovers, penalties, coverage breakdowns, surrendering first downs on fake punts, etc.
The first step in tightening up special teams is to at least give the appearance that special teams matters. That’s an area in which Shanahan certainly can improve.”
Charvarius Ward opens up after tragedy, points to likely 49ers exit
“Returning to the facility alone was exhausting. Ward said that he sometimes skipped meetings because his social battery was so depleted, and that he didn’t want people to feel sorry for him. He doubted whether he could actually return to playing football.
“She was my biggest inspiration, my biggest motivator,” Ward said. “So when I lost her, it’s like the person that I was playing for was the person I was grieving over. So I didn’t really have a purpose anymore. I wasn’t really motivated anymore to go out there and play hard anymore. Because I was just grieving over her. I love my baby more than anybody in the world.
“We just built a great relationship. It was hard at first because I wasn’t around at first, the first couple months of her life, and then when the season ended last year, I got home, she was like, who the F is this guy. She was crying when I tried to touch her. But when we built that relationship, that’s when I started playing the best ball. I was the happiest. So, when I lost her, I didn’t really have no motivation to succeed or any desire to do anything. I just wanted my baby back. I wanted to be around Monique. It was tough.”
He credited the support he received from Lynch and Kyle Shanahan and said they let him come back on his own terms.
“They came to see me the day it happened,” Ward said. “That shit was hard, but [Shanahan] was supporting me. He was supporting me the whole time. He FaceTimed me, called me. They just stayed in constant contact when I wasn’t here and when I did come back and talked to him. I sat in John Lynch’s office and cried to John Lynch when I first got back before the Bills game. I was like, ‘Man, I don’t know if I can do it.’”