What excites Robert Saleh about defensive players in 49ers’ 2025 NFL draft class

SANTA CLARA — Robert Saleh is ready to work with the six defensive members of the 49ers' 2025 rookie class, who all have a chance to earn playing time during the 2025 NFL season."Excited to get them out there this weekend for sure," Saleh said during his first press conference with local media on Thursday. "Really cool group of kids that are coming in. All of them are going to have an opportunity to compete to get significant playing time this year."It's exciting to just get the injection of youth along with a lot of the veterans we have on this football team. It's exciting, it's going to be a lot of fun to work with them."The 49ers' defense struggled through a 6-11 2024 season, but Saleh believes there wasn't one element of the game that caused the downturn of the once-vaunted group. He's confident that one remedy will be San Francisco's talented group of rookies stepping on the field this week."I think it's going to come just with all the youth," Saleh said of what will improve the defense's performance. "There's a lot of empathy for what happened to the group last year. There are a lot of things. Through the halfway point, this defense was playing some really good football...