Who should be the starting safety duo for the 49ers this season?
· Yahoo Sports
This time last year, as the San Francisco 49ers were heading into their Week 1 matchup against the Seattle Seahawks, Kyle Shanahan was reluctant to name his starting safeties.
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In a mild upset, rookie Marques Sigle beat out Ji’Ayir Brown, as the 49ers took the field with a Day 3 rookie and veteran Jason Pinnock.
Sigle’s start to the season was a mixed bag. The ball has a way of finding you when things aren’t going your way as a defensive back. It’s like in baseball, when a new defensive player takes the field. In Sigle’s case, he allowed a near-perfect passer rating in 27 targets during the first month and a half, starting with 23 of those passes resulting in completions.
In Sigle’s defense, he was probably in a position to make a play on the ball for about 20 of those. But that doesn’t cut it in the big leagues, as he found out.
As frustrating as Sigle was, he at least showed promise. The same cannot be said for Pinnock, who wound up allowing a whopping 88.5% of his 26 targets to be completed, including four for touchdowns, without registering a single pass breakup.
The 49ers hoped to weather the storm until Malik Mustapha returned from an injury. By the time Week 7 rolled around, Sigle and Pinnock’s snaps were halved.
Tig took over as the starter and never looked back. Brown finished the season allowing 61.5% of his passes to be completed, but did surrender six touchdowns compared to two pass breakups and a pair of interceptions. He increased the floor at the position ever so slightly.
Mustapha slowly but surely regained his role as the starter, and was cemented there by Week 8. Mustapha recorded the lowest missed tackle rate of the bunch, but at 15%, it was a figure that paled in comparison to the numbers Jimmie Ward and Jaquaski Tartt put up.
Those veterans may not have had the flashy plays in coverage that fans want, but their mistakes were few and far between. Mustapha limited the damage in coverage for most of the season, outside of a 44-yarder in his first start against the Texans.
Will it be another season where Mustapha needs to work himself back into shape before starting, or will Raheem Morris trust Mustapha out of the gate? His defense spent the last month with Brown and Sigle as the starting duo.
In a situation that’s likely to be fluid until two either prove they have what it takes to be starters in this league, or one eliminates themselves, which duo do you trust the most to start?