Your daily San Francisco 49ers news for Saturday, December 30th, 2023
“The 49ers likely will turn to veteran safety Logan Ryan, whom the team signed on Dec. 5 after starter Talanoa Hufanga was lost for the season due to a torn ACL.
Ryan, in his 11th NFL season, is in line to make his 122nd career start and his first with the 49ers. He previously has started games for New England, Tennessee, the New York Giants and Tampa Bay.”
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“Starter Javon Hargrave has been battling a hamstring injury, so the 49ers were fortunate to add another top-line player for the defensive line.
Joseph-Day had three sacks, 11 quarterback hits and 31 tackles in 14 games with the Chargers. He can be expected to factor into the rotation immediately and could eventually become one of their most-used defensive linemen in the postseason.”
49ers’ Charvarius Ward adding big plays to cornerback repertoire
“When Wilks, whose area of expertise is the secondary, arrived this offseason he saw that Ward, who goes by the nickname “Mooney,” was already established as a starter. But Wilks believed there was more to unlock.
“When he first got here, he always told me, ‘Moon, you a bad MF’er,’” Ward said. “Just instilling that confidence in me and believing in me. I just want to repay him for believing in me.”
Ward’s touchdown offered a prime example of how Wilks has helped. In the Saturday walkthrough before that game, the Niners ran the exact play that would result in the pick-six.
On it, Ward would drop into Cover 3 zone, but the rules of his responsibility required him to pass off Arizona tight end Trey McBride had he run any further across the field. When McBride sat down in the zone, Ward knew exactly what play it was, jumping in front of the pass and racing at a top speed of 20.6 miles per hour for the score.”
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“He’s played a two-gap scheme so far in his career while the 49ers play the opposite of that. That suggests the learning curve will be challenging. Still, Bosa noted that Joseph-Day’s strength — his quickness — makes him a good match for the 49ers’ aggressive, up-field style. Day ran his 40-yard dash in 2018 in 4.97 seconds and had a 1.68-second 10-yard split, both of which are impressive for a 300-pound interior defensive lineman.”
“Logan has done a great job,” Wilks told reporters. “I was excited when we got him. I knew at some point in time that he was going to do a great job in stepping in for us. His leadership there, and I talked to Fred [Warner] about this coming off the field yesterday, and I was like, ‘Did you feel and see Logan?’ He’s like, ‘Yeah, man, he talks.’ And that’s the great sign of a safety. His ability to communicate, particularly when you’ve got a new guy in there, and he’s stepping up and doing those things. So, I like his presence. He has skin on the wall, as I call it. He’s been around the league for a while, played in a couple Super Bowls, so he understands the magnitude of where we are at this time of the year.”
“The 49ers likely will turn to veteran safety Logan Ryan, whom the team signed on Dec. 5 after starter Talanoa Hufanga was lost for the season due to a torn ACL.
Ryan, in his 11th NFL season, is in line to make his 122nd career start and his first with the 49ers. He previously has started games for New England, Tennessee, the New York Giants and Tampa Bay.”
“Tight end. Charlie [Woerner] would have to go in,” offensive line coach Chris Foerster told reporters on Thursday. “We’d have to kind of makeshift that.”
Had Woerner gone in, it wouldn’t have been the first time Foerster and Williams saw a tight end used on the offensive line in an emergency situation for their team.
“And it’s kind of funny, I was telling Trent [Williams] this morning because they’ve only recently gone to eight offensive linemen,” Foerster explained. “When I got in the NFL, there was, we always had eight up, but then special teams and everything else took over. So, then we went to seven — everything became seven all of a sudden.
“So, you had seven, and very few times — probably three times in the course of 25, 30 years — did you have to get to some other position playing offensive line. I think it might’ve been our last game in 2014, my last game with Trent in Washington, I think [tight end] Logan Paulson played left tackle for a series or two for us because we were down, we lost Trent, we lost Tom Compton, we lost another guy. And so we had to put Logan in for the last series or two.
“So, yeah, this one is eight linemen, and you lose three guys and you lose a fourth, and one more guy, you’d have to go and put a tight end in. So, it’s tough, but everybody’s back working. And I don’t know what everybody’s injury status is for this week, but I think we’ve got a fair amount of guys to get back at it.”
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