Jason Verrett, Emmanuel Moseley bring swagger to 49ers secondary, says Jerry Rice

The San Francisco 49ers owned the top-ranked pass defense in the NFL last season. Most assumed that much of that had to do with the ferocious pass rush featuring Nick Bosa, Arik Armstead, Dee Ford, and others.

While the 49ers rank No. 13 against the pass this season, Hall of Fame wide receiver Jerry Rice sees something in the team's secondary that he has not seen from a San Francisco squad in a while.

"I'm going to tell you, I'm watching Jason Verrett, and I'm saying, 'Where did this guy come from?'" Rice said on 95.7 The Game's The Morning Roast. "The plays that he was making yesterday, and also Emmanuel Moseley, they had the swagger, they had the confidence, and you can see they brought something to that secondary that we hadn't had for a second.

"You win championships with defense, and to see those guys blossom the way they did yesterday, it sets the standard really high, and they're only going to get better if they can just stay healthy and just keep doing what they're doing. But I could see that swagger in that secondary yesterday."

Rice wasn't sure about George Kittle's swagger, though, as the tight end ran into the end zone for a score on 4th-and-2 at the start of the second quarter.

"I also saw toward the end, he was doing like a little Deion Sanders," Rice said. "... To try to pull that one off, I was looking at him, I'm like, 'Oh Kittle, you're trying to bite off a little too much right now, OK?'"

You can listen to the entire conversation with Rice below.