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Kris Kocurek Explains Why Nick Bosa Had a Down Season in 2023

"If you're off a little bit in the NFL, you're not going to win. Those guys get paid a lot of money to block him and he gets paid a lot of money to beat them. It's a battle of small, minute details."

Grant Cohn

September 18, 2022; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers defensive line coach Kris Kocurek (left) and defensive end Nick Bosa (97) before the game against the Seattle Seahawks at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports
September 18, 2022; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers defensive line coach Kris Kocurek (left) and defensive end Nick Bosa (97) before the game against the Seattle Seahawks at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports / Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports
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SANTA CLARA -- Nick Bosa turned heads when he showed up to 49ers OTAs this year.

Last year, he didn't attend OTAs, minicamp or training camp, and as a result he had a down season. This week, defensive line coach Kris Kocurek explained why Bosa's pass-rush production suffered.

Q: After the season, Nick Bosa said he felt he played the run as well as he ever has been his pass rush wasn't where he wanted it to be. And he mentioned hand usage in particular, that he didn't get the reps during the offseason. Is that what you saw?

KOCUREK: I would agree with his assessment of himself. He always has been a really dominant run player for us on the edge. He has the ability to reduce run lanes with his edge sets. And he has the ability to close ground on the back side and get to plays. There's instinctual stuff he does in the run game that people don't really even see. In the pass rush, it's difficult with the contract stuff to miss everything. He does a lot of honing in during camp where he gets the reps versus Trent Williams and the one on ones versus Trent. Those are really valuable reps going against the best of the best daily. You really get honed in on that stuff. He wasn't able to get that. We hit the ground running with him with a walk through and three days later he was in a game. Even when you're one of the best in the world at doing what you do, that's a difficult task to ask. Just the timing of things will be more honed in this year. Just being able to go against Trent during camp and really get a feel for the hand use and the timing of it. If you're off a little bit in the NFL, you're not going to win. Those guys get paid a lot of money to block him and he gets paid a lot of money to beat them. It's a battle of small, minute details."

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Grant Cohn

GRANT COHN

Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn's channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers' official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.

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