There may not be a more important pair of people on the 49ers coaching staff this season than defensive line coach Kris Kocurek, and assistant defensive line coach Darryl Tapp. That duo has helped produce some tremendous seasons out of players with previously untapped potential over the last couple years, but 2023 may be their biggest, most important challenge to date.
Having Nick Bosa, Arik Armstead and Javon Hargrave will certainly help, but the 49ers are attempting to replace two of their most productive defensive linemen with a group of relative unknowns.
With Samson Ebukam and Charles Omenihu leaving in free agency, they took with them a combined 112 pressures and 13 sacks from last season.
Replacing that productivity isn’t going to be easy. The group of Drake Jackson, Clelin Ferrell, Austin Bryant and Robert Beal Jr. had a combined 49 pressures and 7.0 sacks last season. Even veteran Kerry Hyder who’s become a more hybrid end/tackle posted just 14 pressures and one sack a season ago.
The bad news is there are perhaps even more unknowns with this group than there have been with any group of defensive ends prior to this. The good news is there’s a precedent for Kocurek and Tapp squeezing production from players like Arden Key, Ebukam and Omenihu when they’d previously left the stat sheet relatively unmarked.
It wouldn’t be a shock if the 49ers figured out how to get production from this group of unproven DEs, but it would be perhaps the most impressive and important coaching job yet from an already accomplished 49ers’ staff.
