Robert Saleh could have an interesting potential advantage at a key position in 2025

The 49ers are likely going to embrace a youth movement at two linebacker spots, which could give them an advantage in one area when defending the pass.

One of the biggest challenges Robert Saleh will have in the first season of his second spell as 49ers defensive coordinator is working with a linebacker group that, save for the obvious exception of All-Pro Fred Warner, is very inexperienced.

Having lost Dre Greenlaw in free agency in spite of their best efforts, the 49ers will likely be relying on young players at the linebacker spots next to Warner.

Curtis Robinson and Tatum Bethune will hope to make strong pushes to play significant snaps at the position, while free agent signing Luke Gifford will look to prove he can have value beyond special teams after starting four games for the Tennessee Titans last year.

The reality, though, is that the frontrunners to play the WILL linebacker spot next to Warner are Dee Winters and rookie third-round pick Nick Martin. Whoever loses out will likely be the starter at SAM linebacker on base downs.

Winters would have played more than 41% of the defensive snaps last season in Greenlaw’s injury-enforced absence had he not been stuck behind De’Vondre Campbell on the depth chart. Campbell’s play and his actions at the end of the campaign revealed that to be a mistake on the part of the 49ers, but Winters does head into year three of his career with the benefit of at least some experience playing regular defensive snaps.

Still, having both Winters and Martin on the field will place a lot of onus on both Saleh and Warner to ensure their inexperience is not a hindrance as the 49er defense looks to return to its previous high levels after a precipitous drop-off under previous coordinator Nick Sorensen last year.

Winters and Martin both check the boxes athletically, though. Martin ran a 40-yard dash of 4.53 seconds in the pre-draft process, that time just slightly slower than Winters’ 4.49 in 2023. They have each shown significant upside in pursuit and flashed promise in coverage, with Winters enjoying some encouraging performances late last season as he started to get on the field more. Yet perhaps their most interesting shared quality is the prowess they each displayed as blitzers in college.

In his final season with TCU in 2022, Winters registered 7.5 sacks and, per Pro Football Focus, tied eighth among all FBS linebackers with at least 50 pass rush snaps with 30 pressures. He was tied for 11th in PFF’s pass rush productivity metric.

Martin enjoyed similar success rushing the passer at Oklahoma State. He had six sacks in 2023, tallying 30 pressures — tied for seventh among all FBS linebackers — and was 11th in pass rush productivity.

A knee injury cut Martin’s 2024 season short, but he still generated pressure on a third of his pass rush snaps, recording nine pressures on 27 pass rush snaps across his five games in 2024.

Martin’s ferocious downhill style of play naturally lends itself to pass rushing, and he also has an intriguing ability to bend around the edge when he attacks the outside as an additional rusher.

Explaining his role as a pass rusher at Oklahoma State when speaking to reporters in his post-draft media session, Martin said:

“I definitely love rushing and my coaches like to use my athleticism and just like doing different things with the linebackers sometimes, putting me on the edge or a blitzing between the tackles. But we had certain calls where, like I said, I would go on the edge. And then definitely in ‘23, I was more of a balanced to rush guy. So the front was able to eat and I was balancing them and it kind of was one of those getting a feel for it. And I kind of just picked it up pretty easy. Rushing is something I love to do. Who doesn’t like sacking the quarterback? That’s something that I definitely consider a great part of my game.”

With Warner one of the better blitzing linebackers in the game, having Martin and Winters in the lineup creates some intriguing potential options for Saleh in terms of sending extra rushers.

Yet it is not something he or the 49ers have done regularly.

Indeed, in his final full season as the Jets head coach, New York blitzed just 16.3% of the time, the second-lowest rate in the NFL. The 49ers were just above the Jets on 18%, a rate that decreased to 17.7% in 2024. Last season, the Jets’ blitz rate was a greatly increased 25.6%, but Saleh coached just five games before being fired.

Saleh, though, has seen his linebackers have success rushing the passer relatively recently. CJ Mosley ranked 22nd in PFF pass rush grade among the 79 backers with at least 25 pass rush snaps in 2023. A year prior, Quincy Williams had three sacks and six quarterback hits.

It would be unrealistic, though, to expect Saleh to suddenly become a blitz-heavy coordinator. The 49ers invested heavily in the front four in the draft with the clear intention of becoming a team that can once again control games with their defensive line.

However, given the three selections on the D-Line were players who are primarily regarded for their run-stopping ability, Saleh might have to find ways to engineer pass rush from other areas if the development of Mykel Williams, Alfred Collins and CJ West is not as fast as they hope.

Boasting a linebacker in Warner who ranked 10th in pass rush productivity just two seasons and two young players at the position highly regarded for their exploits in that area in college, Saleh has some intriguing extra buttons he can press to manufacture pass rush. Depending on how often he uses them, they could prove to be a key additional edge in his first season back calling the defense.