SANTA CLARA, Calif. — “We’d crush the s— out of them. We were smokin’. We were like a freight train running down the track. If something gets on the track, we’d run over ’em.”
That quote is from Jim Washburn when the San Francisco 49ers switched to a Wide 9 defensive line alignment four years ago.
Washburn is known as the father of the Wide 9, which he came up with more than two decades ago when he was the defensive line coach for the Tennessee Titans. The 49ers’ defensive line coach, Kris Kocurek, is his protege. Cleveland Browns defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz was in Tennessee with Washburn when the Wide 9 emerged in the early 2000s and he’s used it wherever he’s coached since then.
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Washburn, 73, is prickly, profane and an excellent quote. (Back in 2019, he likened Kocurek to “a raccoon on meth.” That turned out to be a good description for the kinetic, yell-until-he’s-hoarse assistant coach). No one knows more about the Wide 9 than Washburn, making him the perfect guy to talk to this week for Sunday’s Clash of the Wide 9s.
But he texted back that he was unavailable to chat. Why? Because this year he’s working as a defensive consultant for Schwartz and the Browns. Which only underscores how intent the Browns are on creating a Wide 9 juggernaut on the shores of Lake Erie and how Kyle Shanahan and San Francisco’s offense essentially will be facing their own defense on Sunday.
“They’ve got an all-world pass rusher, they’ve got linebackers that fly around, they’ve got DBs that are talented, play really sticky coverage, they’ve got interior defensive linemen who get penetration,” tackle Trent Williams said. “I do see a lot of similarities. Obviously, they’re the No. 1 defense in the league. So at this time nobody really compares. We’ve got a match made for us.”
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The Wide 9 tends to be associated with the pass rush whenever it’s discussed in the media. After all, the defensive ends are aligned wide in the formation and the linemen are instructed to fire off the snap and burst upfield to get to the quarterback. Browns defensive end Myles Garrett has 5 1/2 in four games and the 49ers have heaped praise on him all week.
But the alignment was invented to stop the run.
Twenty years ago, Washburn and the Titans became frustrated by then-Indianapolis Colts running back Edgerrin James, whom they faced twice a season and who was particularly effective on stretch runs. Even when the Titans were in perfect position, James somehow would end up gaining 4 or 5 yards.
So Washburn started lining up one of his big, physical defensive ends on the outside shoulder of the opposition’s tight end. It created a roadblock for running backs hoping to get to the outside, forcing them to cut back to the middle of the field and into the teeth of the defense.
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“The Wide 9 kind of sets edges, it makes it harder to get outside,” 49ers run game coordinator Chris Foerster said this week. “You have to find ways to do it.”
Shanahan encountered those edge obstacles back when he was an offensive coordinator in Houston and Washington a little more than a decade ago. The stretch zone runs that are such a staple of his attack didn’t work as well against the Wide 9, which during those years had spread to Philadelphia and Detroit. (Schwartz was the Lions head coach from 2009 to 2013 and Kocurek coached the defensive line for his whole tenure, with Washburn joining in 2013.)
It’s a big reason why Shanahan hired Kocurek to run his defensive line back in 2019.
“I played against (Kocurek’s) style of coaching for a long time, back when I was a coordinator in the AFC South,” Shanahan said at the time. “Then they all went to Detroit, and they trained Kris. So he was kind of the guy they brought up in that system. I hated going against it (when it was) in Detroit.”
With Kocurek on board, the 49ers defense has been just as stingy against the run as those Lions defenses were. They’ve gone 32 straight games without an individual rushing for 100 yards. In fact, the last player to do that was a quarterback, Chicago’s Justin Fields, who ran for 103 yards on Oct. 31, 2021.
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The Browns? They’ve been almost as good this season. They held Cincinnati’s Joe Mixon to 56 yards in Week 1, Pittsburgh’s Najee Harris to 43 yards in Week 2, Tennessee’s Derrick Henry to 20 yards in Week 3 and Baltimore’s Gus Edwards to 48 yards in Week 4.
They rank fourth in the NFL against the run in allowing 71.8 yards a game, with the 49ers ranking second at 64.2 yards. The top team in that category, the Philadelphia Eagles (61.2 yards a game), also use a lot of Wide 9 alignments. Not coincidentally, they employ Washburn’s son, Jeremiah, as their defensive end/outside linebackers coach.
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All of which makes Sunday’s game an interesting chess match between Schwartz and Shanahan’s run-heavy offense and perhaps a precursor to the 49ers’ game in Philadelphia in December. Shanahan and the 49ers offense have as much experience with the Wide 9 as any team considering they’ve practiced against it from May through August for the past four years. But those practice sessions haven’t gotten any easier with time, and when Nick Bosa, Arik Armstead and the other starters on the field, the defense usually wins the day.
Shanahan said the Wide 9 has weaknesses just as any alignment does. But identifying them and acting on them are often two different things.
“That’s kind of why we wanted to get it (here),” he said on Friday. “I think you always know the weaknesses of it and how to (exploit) it. It’s just really hard to do. That’s why I’ve always liked it so much.”
(Top photos of Myles Garrett: Jason Miller / Getty Images; Nick Bosa: Michael Owens / Getty Images
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