The 49ers Need Alfred Collins Against The Run, And PFF Ranks Him Near The Bottom There

The 49ers spent an offseason on their defensive line and the plan for the interior of it is two men. Osa Odighizuwa is one. Alfred Collins, No. 95, is the other. San Francisco took him 43rd overall in the second round of the 2025 draft, and David Bonilla reported on August 6 that Collins is expected to line up alongside Odighizuwa in Week 1.

That plan has a specific job attached to it. San Francisco allowed 424 carries for 1,833 yards last season, 4.3 a carry, and recorded 20 sacks, the fewest in the league. The line was rebuilt to fix both. Then Tennessee ran 31 times for 167 yards on August 13, 5.4 a carry, in a preseason game San Francisco lost 19-13.

PFF's grades from that night rank Collins last of the ten San Francisco defensive linemen charted against the run, and second-lowest of the twenty-five 49ers charted on defense overall. It was his first live football since shoulder surgery.

The defense that comes with that, and the reason it does not hold#

The obvious answer is sample size: he had just come back, and he needs reps. It is a real argument. The club published no participation report for the preseason opener, so there is no official record of how long anybody was on the field, and a grade off one appearance in a comeback from shoulder surgery is close to the least predictive number in football.

The trouble is that the same ranking exists over a season, and the season is not small.

PFF's 2025 grades rank Collins 127th of the 133 interior defensive linemen who cleared its playing-time filter against the run. Overall on defense he ranked 146th of 169. That is a rookie season, not an appearance.

And the shape of it is the part that matters, because the two halves of his job separate cleanly. As a pass rusher, PFF's 2025 rankings put him 76th of 137 qualifying interior linemen, which is the middle of the league. Against the run he is six places off the bottom of his position.

The preseason grade is not a new finding. It is the same finding on a worse sample.

What the ranking cannot see, and it is not nothing#

A run-defense grade for an interior lineman is a contested instrument, and the contest is about role. A three-technique is asked to get up the field and make plays. A nose is asked to occupy two blockers and let a linebacker make the play, and doing that job perfectly produces a stat line of nothing. John Chapman, reviewing the Tennessee film on August 15, made the distinction himself while still calling Collins' night a bad one: three plays he graded as poor, some decent ones in between.

Run defense is also a unit result before it is a man's. Tennessee's 167 yards came against a front that was mostly backups on a night when San Francisco's starters largely did not play, and pinning a team rushing average on the one returning interior starter is precisely the error a bottom-of-the-list grade invites. The 49ers' own running game managed 84 yards on 28 carries in the same game. Neither line looked like a first-team line, because neither was.

So the honest statement of the problem is not that Collins is bad. It is that the club has bet its interior run defense on a second-year player whose one season of evidence ranks near the bottom of his position at exactly that, and the opener did nothing to complicate the picture.

What camp has actually produced#

Collins opened camp on the active/PUP list on July 25, one of four, recovering from a shoulder injury carried out of his rookie season and repaired in the offseason. He was activated at the end of July. Matt Barrows confirmed the surgery on August 5 and had him limited to individual work to that point in camp. The same day, Bonilla reported that with Odighizuwa sidelined, Collins "received a bigger workload during team drills."

The one flash anybody has published came in the joint practice with Tennessee on August 11, when Collins, Odighizuwa and Romello Height were credited with would-be sacks in team periods. That is a pass-rush note. The phase he already ranks better in is the phase producing his camp highlights, which is not the phase the season depends on.

He is not mentioned in the report from Sunday's practice, the thirteenth of camp. Monday, August 17 was a closed walk-through with no media availability, per the club's published practice and media schedule for the week, so there is no new observation of him today from anyone.

Why his snaps are going up regardless#

The room around him is thin and getting thinner. Mykel Williams is on PUP with an ACL. Mikail Kamara and K.J. Henry are on injured reserve. Gracen Halton did not practice Sunday with an ankle, and C.J. West left the same session early after being shaken up, one of two linemen hurt on back-to-back plays. On Monday the club signed Victor Dimukeje, a sixth-season defensive lineman with 60 games and eight starts, and released two others.

A defense in that condition does not manage Collins' workload down. It finds out what it has.

What settles it, and what to watch for#

Two games and one joint practice. Tuesday, August 18, the 49ers practice against the Chargers in El Segundo at 9:50am, with an availability afterward. Thursday, August 20 they play the Chargers at SoFi at 7:00pm PDT, and Thursday, August 27 they close the preseason at Las Vegas at 5:00pm PDT.

The thing to watch is narrow and it is not a highlight. It is whether Collins holds the point at the nose against a first-team offensive line rather than a second, and whether the staff puts him out there to find out. A tackle doing the job right often does not appear in the play at all, which is the whole difficulty with grading it, and it is why the simpler measure is better: watch where the back ends up on runs at his gap.

If San Francisco's plan is real, Collins takes first-unit interior snaps at SoFi on Thursday. If the club is still deciding, it will look like a rotation.

The transaction block#

Monday, August 17, one club announcement, four moves. Signed DL Victor Dimukeje and OL Nick Zakelj to one-year deals. Released RB Khalil Herbert, fifteen days after signing him, and OL Kion Smith, eleven days after signing him. Zakelj was released by the club on August 10 and is back seven days later. All four sit outside the projected 53 on this site's 53-man tracker, and nobody crossed the cut line.

Sources. 49ers.com release and the club's own transaction log, both read at 3:05pm PT Monday, August 17; ESPN's transaction file, read at the same time, still carried August 13 as its newest entry. The club's roster page for Collins' number, position and experience. ESPN's box score and team statistics for the August 13 game and the 2025 season. David Bonilla, 49ers Webzone, August 5, August 6, August 11 and August 16. Matt Barrows, The Athletic, August 5. Nick Wagoner, ESPN, August 16. John Chapman, 49ers Rush, August 15. The club's published practice and media schedule for the week, carried by 49ers Webzone on August 14. PFF figures appear here as rank only, never as a grade. Nobody from this site was at any practice or at the game.