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SANTA CLARA — Nick Bosa has been even better than advertised.
And I’m not talking about the hype that came from his first days of training camp with the Niners this summer or his near-impeccable NFL Draft scouting report from last spring.
I’m going way back. Before Ohio State. Before he was even in high school.
The first time I heard of Nick Bosa, I was actually asking about his older brother Joey.
I was in South Florida, scouting the elder Bosa brother, who turned out to be one of the top college football prospects in Broward County and soon thereafter, the country.
Yeah, Joey is really good.
But just wait until you see his brother, I was told.
At the time, Nick Bosa was in eighth grade, but it didn’t take long for word to hit the football-crazed streets about the next Uber-prospect — if Joey Bosa was good, Nick Bosa was going to be great.
The years later, I think it’s fair to say that the 49ers couldn’t agree more.
Nick, whom the Niners selected with the No. 2 overall pick in the 2019 NFL Draft, has been a revelation in his first seven NFL games, helping lead San Francisco to a surprising 7-0 record on the season. The team’s latest win — a 51-13 blowout of the Carolina Panthers at Levi’s Stadium — was also the younger Bosa’s finest game in his young professional career.
He had three sacks in the first half of the contest — tying a single-game Niners rookie record — and in the second half, seemingly bored with driving Carolina quarterback Kyle Allen into the dirt, he picked up an interception with a draw-dropping display of athleticism that he nearly took 55 yards into the end zone.
He had the Levi’s Stadium crowd changing his name Sunday. The calls of “Bo-sa, Bo-sa, Bo-sa” were seemingly only interrupted by the Niners’ touchdowns.
In all, he had four tackles, three sacks, three tackles for loss, an interception, and three quarterback hits. He’s the first Niner with three sacks and an interception in a game since at least 1982, the first year sacks started being recorded by the NFL.
And with seven sacks in seven games, leading the NFC’s best defense, San Francisco’s No. 97 isn’t just the favorite for Defensive Rookie of the Year — he’s a legitimate Defensive Player of the Year candidate.
Only one player in NFL history has ever been named Defensive Rookie of the year and the Associated Press’s Defensive Player of the Year in the same season — arguably the greatest pass rusher in the history of the game, Lawrence Taylor.
Yes, he’s only seven games into his NFL career, but Bosa looks like a man amongst boys on the field, despite the fact that the is, at least according to his age, a boy amongst men.
Dee Ford is an elite pass rusher himself — he has 35 sacks in six NFL seasons, including a 13-sack, seven-forced-fumble campaign with Kansas City last season that earned him a five-year deal worth up to $85 million from the 49ers this past spring.
He’s in awe of what Bosa is doing as a rookie.
“There’s nothing that he can’t do right now,” Ford said Sunday. “He has a power move, he has a counter move… he has the edge, he can beat you inside — he’s a three-way rusher [inside, outside, right through you] and that’s what makes you elite.
“And if he keeps doing what he’s doing, he’ll go down as one of the best.”
I asked Ford — if Bosa is so good right now, what does he still have to work on?
Not much, it turns out.
“Pass rush is not pretty. You don’t do a lot of moves, you just perfect it. We understand as rushers that we leave things out the table all the time — it’s hard to perfect and rush at 100 percent. He’s going to be chasing that 100 percent. But he hit 90 today.”
Can he get to100 percent in his rookie year?
“Yeah,” said Ford, without the slightest bit of hesitation.
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Bosa was so dominant, so omnipresent on Sunday, that it felt as if he could choose which way he wanted to wreck the Panthers’ day Sunday.
His three sacks against Carolina showed off his incredible strength and balance, but also something that cannot be refined in a gym: his nose for the quarterback.
It was as if Allen was chum and Bosa was a hungry shark. Panthers tackles Daryl Williamson and Taylor Moton tried to hold Bosa back, but they stood little chance — the rookie was earning double and even triple teams Sunday and routinely beating them, too.
And even when Bosa wasn’t getting to Allen, the attention he was earning helped someone else on the Niners’ defensive line breakthrough. Defensive tackle Arik Armstead, who has been fantastic this season, registered two sacks on Sunday. Ronald Blair and D.J. Jones had one each, too.
Bosa and the 49ers’ defense — particularly the pass rush — effectively upended the quarterback’s short but charmed career. Coming into Sunday’s game, Allen had gone 4-0 with seven touchdowns, no interceptions, and a 106 quarterback rating. He had played so well that folks in Charlotte were questioning if former NFL MVP Cam Newton, 30, would ever start another game for the Panthers.
Allen ended the game 19-for-37 with 158 yards and three interceptions. Newton will probably start again for Carolina once he’s healthy.
But while Bosa’s sacks were wildly impressive, it was his interception that was most jaw-dropping.
The NFL is filled with hyper-elite athletes, and perhaps no position on the field combines speed, skill, and strength like defensive ends. But defensive ends don’t pluck passes out of the air — not the way Bosa did Sunday.
Surely it’s happened before, but the only player I can recall making a play like Bosa did against the Panthers — where he fought through a block, jumped up, and intercepted a screen pass — is Khalil Mack, who did something similar against the Panthers in 2016, the year he won Defensive Player of the Year.
Bosa has so many qualities that remind me of Mack. Perhaps the only comparative shortcoming is that, unlike Mack, Bosa didn’t score on the play.
To be fair, there was a lot further to go, but that shouldn’t take away from how incredible it was.
Because this kid is the real deal — a game-changer, a unit-changer, the kind of player that has some of the best players in the league (and one of the best to ever play the game) singing his praises.
“He’s probably one of the best picks in the ten years,” Richard Sherman said Sunday. “And he’s played like this since Day 1… He plays like a 10-year vet.”
He’s playing like the one who was promised back on that sweltering South Florida day at the beginning of the decade.
Because he’s not just good — he’s great.
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