SANTA CLARA — I will say it again: Safeties are destiny in the NFL playoffs.
So it’s a bit concerning that we don’t know whose hands the 49ers will put their destiny in for Sunday’s NFC Championship Game against the Lions.
And it’s certainly not helpful that playing alongside that mystery safety will be a No. 2 cornerback, Ambry Thomas, whom the 49ers cannot trust following a woeful performance in the divisional round.
Yes, the Niners’ secondary is a bit of a mess right now. Things are a bit weird.
So, if you’re looking for a point of susceptibility for the 49ers going into Sunday’s game— especially with Deebo Samuel practicing on Thursday — this is it.
And unfortunately for the Niners, the time to sort it out was a month ago, not a few days ahead of facing the most explosive pass offense this team has faced since October.
Head coach Kyle Shanahan and defensive coordinator Steve Wilks might be trying to obfuscate their plans at safety, but they’re making clear: They don’t trust their secondary.
They’re telling Detroit exactly where to attack.
With Thomas, there’s not much the Niners can do — Deommodore Lenoir is thriving in his hybrid defensive back role, defending the slot in nickel formations (two linebackers, five defensive backs) and the outside in base (three linebackers, four defensive backs). Wilks would be foolish to move him from that job.
And after Thomas on the outside cornerback depth chart, there’s… no one. Darrell Luther has 20 snaps in meaningful games this season. Samuel Womack has 26. You’re not putting either of them out there against Amon-Ra St. Brown, Josh Reynolds, and Jameson Williams.
The Niners will have to pray that Thomas, who has played well at times this season (against Dallas, Seattle, and Jacksonville), can bounce back against the Lions’ attack.
But when it comes to the second starting safety job, the Niners might be doing too much.
Against the Packers last week, Shanahan and Wilks made the bold call to sit rookie standout safety Ji’Ayir Brown.
While Brown was coming off a knee injury that sidelined him for the final two weeks of the regular season, he had been one of the league’s best-graded safeties in the six games he played atop the depth chart.
The third-round pick is the future at safety for the 49ers. His play indicated that he was the present, too.
But instead of putting Brown back in his starting role, the Niners undercut him by starting veteran Logan Ryan, who had been an adequate replacement for the regular season’s final two weeks.
“I think it’s a lot when you got a rookie who hasn’t played in a month, who is a very passionate, aggressive player,” Shanahan said after Saturday’s game. “I just don’t want to put all that on him, to have him go out in the playoff game when he hasn’t been out there for four weeks, especially when you have a veteran behind him who could just calm down a little bit.”
Ryan is unquestionably calm. At 32 years old and having played for five teams (winning two Super Bowls with the Patriots), he’s seen and done it all.
But Ryan was also signed off a cruise ship vacation in December. He wasn’t exactly the team’s first choice at safety to start the year. Changing course now? Talk about aggressive.
The result of the switch was, again, acceptable, if only because the Niners won the game. Ryan missed as many tackles as he made against the Packers and was unnoticed (for good and bad reasons) against the pass.
“He has to improve on his tackling,” Wilks said of the veteran. “He’s going to get better with that.”
I don’t think it’s fair to say Ryan helped the Niners win the game, but he certainly didn’t lose them the game.
In short, he didn’t convince anyone that a starting safety job is his moving forward.
But it doesn’t seem to be Brown’s, either. Both Shanahan and Wilks got straight-up weird when they were asked who will start this week.
Shanahan coyly said, “There’s a chance” Brown plays on Sunday.
Wilks was even stranger with his response:
“Ji’Ayir is still in the mix. We’ll see exactly how it goes this week and exactly how much he’s going to play. If he will play, if he will start or whatnot, we don’t know. That’s still an ongoing process right now,” Wilks said.
Thanks for clearing that up, Steve.
Either gamesmanship knows no bounds, or the Niners’ top decision-makers don’t know who will play on Sunday.
I talked to both players on Wednesday, and both said they’ll be ready, but they agreed that the situation is strange.
“I’ll be out there,” Brown, who missed six tackles all season, per Pro Football Focus, said.
But being out there was also the plan last week. Brown told me that — as he understood it — he would rotate into the game against the Packers.
He ended up not playing a snap.
“The plan was to work me in and give me my feel back,” Brown said. “It is what it is — they might have forgot about it.”
And if the divisional round was deemed too big a stage for Brown, what will the NFC Championship Game be?
“I think Ji’Ayir has a great attitude,” Ryan told me. “We all want to win the game— however that role might change from week to week. Last week I got in there… we’ll see how it goes this week.”
But if Ryan was just good enough not to burn the Niners against the Packers, what will happen Sunday against a superior offense?
All of this hand-wringing might be for nothing. The 49ers are the better team, and that truth should be revealed on Sunday.
But if the margins prove tight, look out — one mismatch, properly attacked, is enough to turn a game — and the Niners are fretting their matchups in the secondary on Sunday.
