Getty Nick Bosa celebrating a big play for the San Francisco 49ers.
The San Francisco 49ers have a serious contender for the Defensive MVP award in Nick Bosa, the fourth-year defensive end out of Ohio State who currently leads the NFL in sacks at 17.5. George Kittle has stated it, as has Robert Griffin III, and now Kyle Shanahan has thrown his hat into the ring for his defensive end, too, as he detailed to reporters during his Thursday media availability session.
“Yes, definitely,” Shanahan said via 49ers WebZone. “He’s still young. He’s not perfect. He’s got four personal fouls this year. I told him that’s why his Madden awareness rating is a 99, not a hundred, so yeah, he could get better right there, but he’s playing the top of his game. I feel like we could sit him these next two weeks and my mind would be blown if he wasn’t the defensive MVP, so he’s been great.”
“It’s been his goal probably since he could remember making goals and I know that was a big thing to him this year, how excited he was coming into camp healthy for one of the first times and him just saying how much more he wanted to do because he was healthy and he’s so smart about that stuff, but he was able to get in more practice, build a little bit more stamina for the whole year and it’s showed up on the field because I think he’s a lot better now than he was two months ago and he was better then he was in the beginning of the year.”
Needless to say, fans are already loving Shanahan’s comments, as they not only show complete faith in his former second-overall pick but contextualize just how effective his game has been from a coach who is around him every day.
Nick Bosa’s Versatility is what Makes him so Special
Asked to discuss how DeMeco Ryans uses Bosa and of it impacts his effectiveness on the field, Shanahan asserted that the ability to deploy the defensive end from either side of the field makes him that much harder to game plan against.
“Just that you can’t set up a plan all the time, if you know where a guy is all the time, you can dictate where the center goes,” Shanahan said. “You can dictate where people go to chip. You can dictate a lot of things. It’s still not easy, it’s still real tough, but at least you have an idea where he is going to be.”
“And it’s nice when sometimes you see the huddle break and I know you can see Nick just standing in the middle right next to the center and then he moves to his side and you can see them chip the heck out of the one D-end and this D-end not get anything and it’s really hard to just switch that stuff at the end, so just little things like that and it’s nice that he can go over the center too sometimes.”
In Week 16, the 49ers were finally able to run the starting defensive line they trotted onto the field in Week 16, at least for a dozen or so snaps, and the results were very encouraging; Bosa was able to line up next to both Arik Armstead and Javon Kinlaw, Ryans was able to mix and match his defensive linemen when one or more needed a break, and the team’s top sacker picked up two more as a result. With Kinlaw set to practice fully on Thursday, Bosa’s supporting cast is only going to improve as the playoffs approach.
Good News About the San Francisco 49ers’ 2020 1st-Round Pick
When news broke that Kinlaw did not participate at practice on Wednesday with a knee injury, fans and reporters alike wondered if the third-year defensive tackle out of South Carolina had suffered some sort of setback either in Week 16 or in the days since. Fortunately, that was not the case, and Kinlaw’s absence was, in fact, planned.
“No, that was just the plan all along,” Shanahan said. “We were going to have him go full tomorrow.”
Assuming Shanahan’s prognosis proves true, Kinlaw may be able to build on his encouraging Week 16 re-debut and eat up enough snaps to allow John Lynch to activate Drake Jackson for Week 17, as the rookie USC product earned his first DNP against the Washington Commanders due to the need to keep an extra defensive tackle – practice squad tackle Michael Dwumfour – on the game day roster.