Stats & Eggs Podcast: Will everything be better when Nick Bosa returns?

When Nick Bosa tore his ACL against the Jets, I said that the 49ers’ hopes for a return trip to the Super Bowl went down with him. To be fair, a lot of other stuff has also happened since then that has contributed to my prediction being correct, but I’m taking credit for nailing that anyway. We haven’t heard a ton about Bosa’s recovery, but the snippets we’ve seen do seem to be positive, which is obviously a good thing.

Two 49ers have made comments recently about how much they’re looking forward to having Bosa back on the field in 2021. George Kittle said the team will be, “just fine” when 97 returns, and yesterday Fred Warner cited Bosa as the thing he’s most looking forward to in the year to come.

It made me wonder: does a healthy Nick Bosa in 2021 fix everything on defense?

I’m not so sure, and I don’t think it’s fair to heap those kinds of expectations on the shoulders of a player with one full year of experience who will be coming off of a major knee injury.

(You can hear more of my reasoning in today’s Stats & Eggs podcast by clicking on the player below)

There are too many other variables around Bosa to assume the defense is going to regain their 2019 form when he comes back. We don’t know how good Bosa himself will be, the whole secondary will be different, and we don’t even know who will be coordinating things, assuming that Robert Saleh becomes a head coach.

There is no disputing Nick Bosa’s greatness, but you also can’t deny that the 49ers defense faces some potentially big changes this offseason that go far beyond any one player.