49ers’ Nick Bosa is in one of the worst sack droughts of his career

It’s hard to find any blemishes or warning signs with this 49ers roster when it’s fully operational. Brock Purdy has looked like the real deal through two games, picking right up where he was before his arm was torn off in Philadelphia. Perhaps the most obvious place of concern, kicker, has been at least good enough. Rookie kicker Jake Moody has been solid after a rocky summer, even nailing a 57-yarder in Sunday’s 30-23 win over the Rams.

Paranoid fans have to look high and low for serious problems with this team, in short. Here’s one for the worrywarts, though: The 49ers’ $122 million man is off to an extremely quiet start. Nick Bosa has no sacks through the team’s first two games. In fact, it’s a drought that stretches back to last season: He had zero sacks in the Niners’ three playoff games, and only one total in Weeks 17 and 18. Counting the playoffs, he has five straight sack-less games, and one sack in his last seven games.

It’s by far the least productive stretch of his NFL career. In the 2022 regular season, he only had three games without a sack; in 2021, he had five sack-free games, and never more than two consecutively. He also had four sacks in that season’s three playoff games. His last comparable stretch in the NFL came in his rookie year, 2019, when he had one sack in a six-game stretch starting Oct. 31. (He roared back in that year’s playoffs, racking up four in the Niners’ run to the Super Bowl.)

Sacks are hard to replicate on a year-to-year basis; Bosa had defied that statistical reality with 34 sacks in his electric 2021-22 run. That’s why he was the NFL Defensive Player of the Year last year, and that’s why he was able to hold out all summer to get the contract he deserved. One way to read this is that his sacks are coming back down to Earth.

In Week 1, he signed his new contract just days before the game, leading the 49ers to put him on a light, 35-snap pitch count. He still generated three pressures in those 35 snaps, an excellent rate. He had 56 pressures in his dominant campaign last year, according to Pro Football Focus. (There is enormous variation within how different companies tabulate “pressures,” but all the 2022 advanced stats back up the obvious fact that Bosa was one of the best edge rushers in the NFL last year.)

Official stats and grades aren’t out yet for Sunday’s game, but it’s safe to say it was a quiet one for Bosa. On the basic stat sheet, he generated two tackles, three QB hits, and no sacks. Rams QB Matt Stafford was working with a clean pocket for much of the game before the Niners’ defense started blitzing in the second half.

For his part, Bosa blamed his summer holdout. “I think I needed a couple games to get my body into football shape,” he said after Sunday’s win. “I think now that I’m through two and had some pretty good output, I think I’m only gonna be up from here.”