After the San Francisco 49ers drafted Renardo Green in April’s second round, the Florida State cornerback repeated one word so many times that it left an imprint on general manager John Lynch and coach Kyle Shanahan.
“He told us 15 times when we called him, ‘You got a dog. You got a dog,’” Lynch said. “And that’s exactly what we thought when we drafted him.”
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The 49ers believe Green’s tenacity in coverage, which makes him a candidate to play on both the inside and outside of the secondary for them, makes the descriptor valid. They’ve noticed that Green’s college coaches and teammates also use it. They even drafted one of those Florida State teammates, linebacker Tatum Bethune, in the seventh round.
“Renardo Green is a dog,” Bethune said, unprompted, at the 49ers’ facility last month. “I feed off his energy.”
Florida State defensive coordinator Adam Fuller chuckled as he heard the story of Green’s draft-day call.
“When Renardo gets on the phone and starts talking to Kyle and those guys, that’s his way of making sure that they know how much he appreciates it and how ready he is for the opportunity,” Fuller said. “But it’s not just the singular opportunity. It’s the ability to come back from plays.”
Got a dawg 😤 pic.twitter.com/pLtBDHy1oo
— San Francisco 49ers (@49ers) April 27, 2024
And that resilience is what might’ve truly sold the 49ers on Green.
He led the ACC with 14 pass breakups in 2023. He allowed only one completion of longer than 20 yards that season. He got the best of LSU standout receiver Malik Nabers, whom the New York Giants drafted at No. 6, in huge Florida State victories over two consecutive seasons.
But two years of adversity preceded that success. Green started only seven games in 2020 and 2021. The Seminoles had moved him from cornerback to safety for those two seasons. He fought through various injuries. Florida State had future Los Angeles Chargers cornerback Asante Samuel Jr. at the time, so Fuller figured that Green — the best tackler among the team’s DBs — could be of most help at that safety spot, where depth was sparse.
By 2022, the Seminoles felt comfortable moving Green back to corner. He didn’t miss a game over two resounding seasons.
“He just continued to overcome,” Florida State head coach Mike Norvell said. “It was the way that he approached the work. The belief that he was able to build in the process. I think it helped him as a player.”
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Green, who ostensibly had many reasons to transfer in this day and age of free player movement in the NCAA, became the only member of the 49ers’ eight-player draft class who began and ended his college career at the same school.
“I definitely was tempted to go, but Florida State was a dream school and I believe in staying loyal to what I committed to,” Green said. “When things get hard, it doesn’t mean get up and run away from the challenge. So I really just decided to stay in the paint. I just knew that I could bet on myself. I knew that I had coaches standing behind me and I knew we were all working toward a goal, so I just kept putting one foot in front of the other and I worked for everything I wanted.”
Renardo Green thrived against some of the country’s top receivers, including LSU’s Malik Nabers. (Alicia Devine / Tallahassee Democrat / USA Today)
Trust developed in both directions. Norvell said Green’s resilience — and particularly the way he immediately bounced back from four pass-interference penalties in 2023 — encouraged the Seminoles to put him into increasingly difficult situations against top-notch competition. He guarded Nabers and Brian Thomas Jr., another LSU wideout drafted in the first round. He then faced off against Florida’s Ricky Pearsall, whom the 49ers selected at No. 31 this year, when the Seminoles beat their in-state rivals.
Over 60 coverage snaps against those three receivers, according to Pro Football Focus, Green allowed only five catches and a 28.7 passer rating into his coverage.
“We put him in challenging positions,” Norvell said. “Press man on an island, regardless of the result, if it was a pass breakup or if he gave up a completion, it was the response that really solidified him being a great player.”
Said Fuller: “I don’t know if there was a better on-the-ball corner in one-on-one situations in the entire country this year than Renardo. He’s such a competitor. He takes a lot of pride in how he plays, in winning his one-on-ones. This year, minus one ball that was an over-the-top catch, his make-a-play grade was as good as I’ve ever seen for an entire season.”
The 49ers, who’ve played 60 games over the past three seasons thanks to deep playoff runs, set out to infuse their defense with younger and fresher talent via free agency and the draft. Finding rookies who could immediately contribute on a roster stocked with star veterans, though, was a tricky proposition.
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To maximize their chances of success, the 49ers focused on prospects with copious playing experience — especially those who’d already developed into good tacklers. Green, Bethune and Wake Forest safety Malik Mustapha — who’s built a lot like a linebacker — were the team’s three draftees for the defense.
Notably, the first plays Fuller mentioned when describing both Green and Bethune were huge tackles, made in Florida State’s two wins against LSU.
“Renardo had an unbelievable tackle on Jayden Daniels down in the red zone that set the tone for the 2022 game,” Fuller said. “Very similar tackle that Tatum Bethune had in the 2023 opener in his one-on-one. They both had clean, open-field, powerful, message tackles in back-to-back years.”
The NFL — and the NFC West in particular — appreciated the hard-hitting soundness of the Seminoles defense in this year’s draft. Before the 49ers nabbed Green and Bethune, the Los Angeles Rams spent their first two picks on Florida State defensive linemen Jared Verse and Braden Fiske.
“For two guys on the same side of the ball to get drafted to one team in the same year is crazy,” Fuller said. “And to think we had it with the Rams, too — that might be unheard of. Two and two in the same division on the same side of the ball. That’s super cool.”
Will all four Seminoles suit up when the 49ers travel to face the Rams in Week 3? As high draft picks, Green, Verse and Fiske are all likely to make their respective teams’ 53-man rosters. As a seventh-rounder, Bethune faces a steeper climb — but it’s easy to see why the 49ers believe he has a good shot.
“He’s a tone-setter,” Green said. “If the defense needs a spark, he’ll just go smash somebody. It’ll crank everybody up. Everybody turnt up. He brings energy to the defense and he brings the old-school, smash mouth-type of mentality to the defense.”
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Bethune was an outlier in the 49ers’ draft class in that he didn’t test particularly well during the pre-draft process. The linebacker’s 5-11, 229-pound frame is considered relatively small for the position and his speed numbers — highlighted by a 4.75 40-yard dash — were rather ordinary. He’ll have to make strides to succeed in pass coverage at the NFL level. But Bethune logged a solid time in the three-cone drill (7.02 seconds), and it’s clear that the 49ers see assets in his game that transcend measurable marks.
Florida State’s coaches said diligent film study unlocked Bethune’s snappy play, which might’ve best been on display in how effectively he sniffed out screen passes during his college career.
“He always played so fast,” Norvell said. “You can tell he’s an instinctive player. He always trusts what he sees. Regardless of whether the ball is in the box or out on the perimeter, he’s going to play with incredible closing speed. He’s someone that guys feed off of. He really brings the right mindset.”
Bethune’s description of his on-field symbiosis with Green further illustrates his exceptional spatial awareness.
“We understood each other, our movements, our mannerisms,” Bethune said. “I could tell Renardo is right behind me just because of the way he moves and the sounds.”
Tatum Bethune (15) earned a reputation as a steady tackle at Florida State. (Alicia Devine / Tallahassee Democrat / USA Today)
The two now have a chance to further build rapport on the 49ers defense. They may be working in closer on-field proximity during training camp than in college, because the 49ers have worked Green at slot cornerback during the spring. The team sees the same potential inside-outside versatility in Green that it uses with veteran cornerback Deommodore Lenoir.
Nickelback action is intrinsically tied to more frequent blitzing assignments. Green earned more of those over his final season at Florida State.
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“Renardo used to blitz and wait,” Fuller said. “I told him back in summer of last year, ‘You are an absolute missile, do you understand that?’ I would say it to him every day.”
Green absorbed that message and many other teaching points regarding the intricacies of press-man cornerback play over his five years in college.
“If you talk to him about releases and certain wideouts, he can go for 5-10 minutes without interruption,” Fuller said. “As I got to know him, that just showed how detailed he is as a corner. That’s just who he is.”
There’s the theme of tenacity that lies beneath the focus on football’s details, though, and that might’ve been the selling point for the 49ers on Green and Bethune.
“With Tatum, it was me trying to make sure he didn’t try to separate the head from another human being every time he tried to tackle somebody,” Fuller said. “Understand there’s a time to pull your trigger and there’s a time to just go make a tackle. There were so many good moments with him.”
Perhaps the best illustration of Green’s spirit came in his interaction over the phone with 49ers defensive backs coach Daniel Bullocks before the draft.
“One thing he said was that he wouldn’t want to fight me,” Green said. “I asked him why and he said, ‘Because I feel like you’ll fight until you die.’
“I said, ‘Yeah, that’s what a dog is. You ever seen a dog fight?’ So, he’s seen a lot of things, just on paper about me as a person and how I am. You’re getting a dog, a tenacious football player, an instinctive, athletic football player and a versatile, smart football player.”
(Top photos of Renardo Green and Tatum Bethune: Michael Zagaris / San Francisco 49ers / Getty Images)
