The San Francisco 49ers Are Producing Some Historically Bad Run Defense

On last check-in with the San Francisco 49ers, we found the organization a dysfunctional mess. They willingly put their fans through Blaine Gabbert games, and what talent remainedon the roster was getting hurt early, like linebacker Navorro Bowman and nose tackle Ian Williams. Nobody wanted this defensive coordinator job. This season has been such a disaster that the 49ers should thank the powers that be that Colin Kaepernick started kneeling before the anthem. It's kept people from talking about the actual problems the organization is having when it comes to playing football.

When you take a terrible offense and pair it with a terrible defense, you create game scripts that are ideal for running the football. (A game script is simply the average score differential over each second of the game.) Other than Week 1's bizarre domination of the Rams, and Week 3's surprisingly close loss to the Cowboys, every team the 49ers have played have been in position to put their run defense to the test. (And since the Cowboys and the Rams run a lot anyway, the 49ers still saw plenty of runs in those games.)

Week 9 saw the Saints jump out to a 21-3 lead after three possessions, one they'd never relinquish. New Orleans ran the ball 42 times for 248 yards.

San Francisco is racking up a few remarkable statistics, especially considering how pass-friendly the NFL currently is. The 49ers became the first team to ever allow seven straight games of 100-yard rushers. In an era where franchise backs have been exchanged for committees, the 49ers have allowed their opponents a pair of 60-plus yard rushers in three straight games. That number could easily have been five in a row if the Cardinals or Cowboys fed their backup runners.

Perhaps most damning of all, against the Bills the 49ers became the only team since 2014 to allow 300 yards rushing. Per Pro-football-reference.com:

It's incredible that any team is able to exist like this in 2016, with the amount of information available today. The amount of ego and hubris it took to create this roster and burn the Jim Harbaugh brand in a dumpster is staggering. If these are the best players general manager Trent Baalke can come up with, he probably deserves to be on the street as well.

The only thing more staggering than the ego is how many rushing yards this team is going to allow this season. Because this problem isn't getting fixed anytime soon.