The San Francisco 49ers stole an important piece of the Philadelphia Eagles' defensive line when they signed defensive tackle Javon Hargrave to a massive free-agent contract. It wasn't enough to drop the Eagles, the team that knocked off the 49ers in the NFC Championship Game, from the top spot in Pro Football Focus' 2023 NFL defensive line rankings. Pro Football Focus believes Philadelphia partly offset the loss by drafting Georgia's Jalen Carter.
The Niners adding Hargrave was enough to catapult them from last year's No. 6 spot to No. 2 this year.
"San Francisco has arguably the best edge defender in the NFL in Nick Bosa, who also took home Defensive Player of the Year honors in 2022," wrote Zoltán Buday. "This offseason, they also added free-agent interior defender Javon Hargrave, who adds a pass-rushing element in the middle of the defensive line that the team might have lacked last season."
Hargrave has earned a Pro Football Focus pass-rushing grade of 91.1 or higher in each of the past two seasons. He reached opposing quarterbacks 11 times in 2022. Hargrave was the third-ranked pass rusher among NFL interior linemen in 2022, and his 80.1 overall grade last season was his highest since 2019.
"Arik Armstead had the lowest-graded season of his career last year, but the 29-year-old should still have plenty left in the tank. San Francisco's projected starting four is rounded out by edge defender Drake Jackson, who is expected to make a leap in his second year."
It's worth noting that Armstead missed several regular-season games due to injury in 2022. While he was held without a sack in his nine regular-season appearances, the ninth-year defensive lineman got to opposing quarterbacks twice in the playoffs.
Upgrading the defensive line was a priority this offseason, leading to the Hargrave signing. After the season, the team reassessed all position groups to determine where they needed the most help.
"And the thing we kept coming back to is, on the defensive line, albeit the number one defense in football, played really good defensive football, it was outstanding," general manager John Lynch recently said, "but we felt like we had lost a little bit of our dominance on the D-line. When you think back to 2019, and when you were playing the Niners, you knew you were not going to have a lot of time to throw the ball. On the run game, you were going to have people penetrating. And we felt like, despite playing such good defense, we had maybe fallen off a little."