Isaiah Oliver might have settled the 49ers' slot corner situation with standout showing
In preseason, Isaiah Oliver, the man the 49ers seemingly signed to be their starting nickel cornerback, stood out for all the wrong reasons. He gave up a touchdown in the exhibition opener against the Raiders, missed tackles and generally proved to be a player that opposing offenses had a lot of joy attacking. But in […]
In preseason, Isaiah Oliver, the man the 49ers seemingly signed to be their starting nickel cornerback, stood out for all the wrong reasons.
He gave up a touchdown in the exhibition opener against the Raiders, missed tackles and generally proved to be a player that opposing offenses had a lot of joy attacking.
But in the pressure cooker of a regular-season game against a division rival, Oliver rose to the challenge and showed he is a defender on whom the 49ers can rely in the biggest spots as they defeated the Rams 30-23 in Los Angeles.
The 49ers defense had no success slowing down the Rams offense in the first half, allowing 17 points as San Francisco failed to get to Matthew Stafford and disrupt his connections with Puka Nacua and Tutu Atwell.
But the script flipped in the second half, and it did so in large part thanks to Oliver.
He got the Rams off the field on the first series of the second half with an excellent tackle to stop Kyren Williams short of the sticks. On the next Los Angeles drive, Oliver was alert to a tipped ball off the hands of the same player to record an interception that stopped the Rams from getting into the red zone.
Oliver then delivered what proved to be the coup de gras, knifing into the backfield on fourth and one to help San Francisco drop Williams for a loss, essentially extinguishing the Rams' last hope of turning around a 30-20 fourth-quarter deficit.
The missed tackles have turned into critical hits, with Oliver making six combined tackles, and he has gone from being a player picked on in preseason to one who, albeit with a large slice of luck, produced a momentum-changing play against a passing game that had been firing on all cylinders.
Oliver unsurprisingly received great praise from Kyle Shanahan, who said of the former Falcons corner: "I thought he was a stud today. The fourth and one was huge because that’s a Tampa 2 look, which he’s locked in in the slot and it’s far away from the b-gap and he didn’t hesitate and make a big-time tackle and then getting the pick."
Perhaps most notably, the performance of Oliver came as he saw a significant workload with Ambry Thomas in and out of the game with a knee injury.
The 49ers' response to Oliver's struggles in preseason had been to flip between having Oliver play the slot and having Deommodore Lenoir kick inside on nickel downs with Thomas occupying the starting outside corner spot across from Charvarius Ward in those situations.
Thomas' injury forced the 49ers to stick with Oliver. Given the short turnaround for Thursday's game with the Giants, there is likely to be some doubt over Thomas' availability for Week 3, meaning Oliver may see a full complement of snaps in the slot.
San Francisco hasn't had a definitive solution in the slot to which the Niners have been willing to fully commit. After his standout effort in Los Angeles, Oliver could well be a strong showing in primetime from decisively claiming the role most outside the organization assumed was his before the start of the campaign.
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It could have been much better for the 49ers.
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