The 49ers Love Raheem Morris, and It Is Because He Lets Them Play Football

I have spent three weeks of camp reading about knees and hamstrings and PUP lists, so forgive me for grabbing the one thing at this camp that actually feels good. Our guys love their new defensive coordinator. Not respect. Not tolerate. Love. And it is not complicated why.

Go play. That is the whole message.

Every time somebody sticks a microphone in front of one of our defenders this camp, the same thing comes out in slightly different words. He is a people person. He is smiling out there. He makes it fun. He tells us where to line up and then he gets out of the way and lets us go get the football.

Do you understand how badly this defense needed exactly that? For years we watched a group of freak athletes play like they were taking a math test. Guys thinking instead of reacting. That half a beat of hesitation before the trigger, over and over, in the biggest games, with the season on the table. I have screamed at my television about that hesitation more times than I care to count.

Now Morris walks in and the temperature of the whole thing changes. He does not want them processing a novel before the snap. He wants them fast and violent and free, and he is willing to eat a busted play here and there to get it.

Warner and Greenlaw back together, and somebody finally noticed

The best sound in this camp is Fred Warner and Dre Greenlaw yelling at each other again. Communication, energy, all day, every practice. That duo was the heartbeat of the team that went to the Super Bowl, and we spent two years pretending we could just replace it.

Morris talks about those two like a fan does. Watching them communicate, the energy they bring, it is really fun. That is a coordinator who knows what he inherited and is not too proud to say it out loud. There is no ego in it. He is not walking in here to prove he is the smartest guy in the building, and after the last few years around here, that alone is a gift.

Five-down looks, new coverages, and finally a different picture

For eight years we ran essentially the same defense out of essentially the same front. Great when it was great. Predictable the second a real offensive coordinator got two weeks to prepare for it. How many playoff games have we watched where the other side seemed to know the answer before the question got asked?

Morris brought five-down fronts. He brought coverage looks this roster has not lived in. And here is the part I love: the players did not sulk about it. They embraced it. New scheme, new terminology, in August, and instead of grumbling about the install, this group is excited to have a new toy. That tells you everything about how much they were craving a change and how much they trust the guy handing it to them.

He is not treating this like his consolation prize

Let us be honest about who this is. This is a man who was a head coach in Atlanta and is now taking the coordinator job here, and there is a version of that guy who shows up bitter, doing the job with one eye on his next head coaching interview. That is not what is happening. He shows up first, smiling, ready to make guys better. Players can smell a coach who does not want to be there from a mile away, and they can smell the opposite too. They are responding to somebody who genuinely wants to coach them.

And with Bosa easing back off the ACL, with Kittle and Mykel Williams on PUP, with our injury report already looking like a phone book, having a defensive staff the room actually believes in matters more than usual. Belief is the only thing holding a roster together in a year like this.

So yes, I am allowing myself this one

I do not get to enjoy much around here lately. The Giants have me sick. Half our roster is in a walking boot before anybody has hit anybody. But this? A defense full of grown men who want to run through a wall for their coordinator, who are having fun on a football field in August, who are being told to go play instead of go think?

That is not nothing. That is the difference between a defense that plays scared in January and one that plays like the 2023 group did. If Raheem Morris does nothing else here but unclench this defense's fists, he will have already fixed the thing that has been quietly killing us.

Just get them to the games healthy. That is all I am asking. Let them play.

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