49ers’ fearsome front four ready to bottle in Patrick Mahomes
MIAMI — Lawrence Taylor is the most feared pass-rusher the NFL has ever seen, every quarterback’s worst nightmare, and he has advice for the 49er predators hellbent on cutting off the fearless head of the Kansas City snake, Patrick Mahomes.
“Don’t do what everybody else do. … Do not lose contain on Mahomes, OK?” the original L.T. said on Radio Row. “Teams, they just get out of position and stuff and they start doing stupid stuff. How do you expect to play defense like that if you’re not gonna contain the man?”
L.T. sounded a warning to the 49ers’ vaunted front four.
“You gotta say that the defense is for real,” L.T. said. “Will they be able to put pressure on Mahomes?
“It’s hard to put pressure on a guy that’s running around like a fool, you know?”
The 49ers know. They are fairly certain, however, that Mahomes does not put his pants on two legs at a time.
They are fairly certain that Mahomes is human.
And humans can be rattled.
Ask DeForest Buckner if Mahomes can be rattled.
“Yeah. I think anybody could be rattled,” says Buckner, who had 7.5 sacks in the regular season. “I don’t think they’ve faced a front like us, or a defense like ours. So we just gotta play our game come Sunday.”
Ask Dee Ford if Mahomes can be rattled.
“Yes,” says the defensive end who had 6.5 sacks in 10 games.
I ask him why he says that.
“That’s what they pay us to do,” he says.
The 49ers front four has given the club plenty of bang for its buck. Overall, the San Francisco defense has nine playoff sacks, 57 for the season and 306 quarterback pressures. Mahomes, on the other hand, has been sacked twice in the postseason and 16 times in 16 games overall.
“He can pick you apart in different ways, either with his legs or with his arm,” Ford said. “We feel like we have the guys in the room that we can keep him bottled in and pressure him and make him make bad decisions.”
Saints backup quarterback Teddy Bridgewater is keenly aware of the guys in the room — Buckner, Ford, Arik Armstead (10 sacks) and rookie Nick Bosa (nine sacks) — all of them first-round draft picks.
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“You can’t just worry about one guy,” Bridgewater told The Post. “All those guys can get to the quarterback. It’s a special group.”
It’s a group without a nickname, no Fearsome Foursome or Purple People Eaters or the Gold Rush.
“Didn’t really hear the right name, I guess, so far,” Buckner said, and smiled.
The Super Bowl 42 Giants didn’t have a nickname when Michael Strahan, Osi Umenyiora and Justin Tuck hounded Tom Brady. Unlike Brady, Mahomes can also beat you with his legs.
“We know that he’s not a statue back there, that he’s mobile and can make plays down the field too using his legs, so we’re gonna be cognizant of that, but we’re gonna continue to be aggressive and go after him,” Armstead said.
What makes the 49ers pass rush so dangerous is it can come from anywhere out of the wide-nine alignment imported by defensive line coach Kris Kocurek, and it can come from anyone.
Bosa is the Pro Bowl defensive end technician.
“Going against Nick this offseason in training camp, it was almost shocking to me how developed he was coming out of college, and his game has just improved from that point forward,” veteran 49ers tackle Joe Staley told The Post. “It was almost a relief to me to see how dominant he was when he got in the NFL so early because it started being a point where I was like, ‘Oh man, maybe I’m slipping, maybe the old man’s losing a step or two,’ but he was doing that to every single person he went against.”
Buckner: “It’s unbelievable how good he is with his hands.”
Ford brings veteran leadership and a lightning get-off.
Armstead: “His speed is frightening and it opens up a lot of things for us.”
Buckner: “They get so scared of his speed, but they forget how strong he is.”
Armstead, 6-foot-8 with a mean long-arm stab who can play both end and tackle, enjoyed a breakout season.
“He’s a monster,” Buckner said. “He’ll go right through somebody’s face to get a sack.”
Buckner is also 6-8 and plays both end and tackle.
“He’s 6-8, but he can play like he’s 6-2, his pad level can be very low,” Ford said.
Bull’s-eye: Mahomes.
“The culture and mentality we have,” Armstead said, “is to be legendary.”
Mahomes versus mayhem.
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