SANTA CLARA — 12:15 on the dot. Raheem Morris was punctual — not a common occurrence for prescheduled 49ers’ press conferences — at his first session with the Bay Area media Thursday.

It took only a few seconds for the team’s new defensive coordinator — who recently told colleagues he’d throw a pool party for every draft pick he deemed a hit — to lavish praise on the players he’s inheriting.

“You get a chance to really marvel at some of the talent they’ve been able to acquire the past couple years,” Morris said.

The 49ers used their first five selections of the 2025 NFL Draft on defenders before adding four more draftees and signing four undrafted free agents to aid Morris’ group two weeks ago. They also used two picks from their 2026 draft stash to acquire veteran defensive linemen Keion White and Osa Odighizuwa.

Sputtering defensive performance over the past three seasons dictated a talent overhaul, and Morris — previously coach of the Atlanta Falcons — now oversees a 49ers group that looks very different outside of its three foundational pillars: defensive end Nick Bosa, linebacker Fred Warner, and cornerback Deommodore Lenoir.

EPA is “expected points added”; numbers are ranks among the NFL’s 32 teams.

How will Morris’ defense play in the schematic and stylistic senses?

That’s the money question, and it’s clear that the 49-year-old Morris — who faces four months of offseason prep work with his new players before play calls start counting — didn’t want to delve into specifics.

Neither do the 49ers’ new players.

“I don’t want to get into that,” Romello Height, one of the team’s third-round draft picks, said Thursday in response to a question about how Morris might use him.

There’s an unusual amount of murkiness here because Morris, over his two-plus decades of NFL coaching, has worked in and coordinated a wide array of schemes.

At his most recent post, Morris oversaw defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich. Like the 49ers of the past decade, Ulbrich ran a four-man front. But unlike recent 49ers teams, Ulbrich blitzed profusely — the Falcons’ 34.7% blitz rate was the NFL’s second-highest. (The 49ers ranked No. 22, with a 20.3% blitz rate.) Atlanta’s secondary also ran man coverage at a much higher rate than the 49ers, who’ve been a predominantly zone-based team.

Morris hinted that he’d amalgamate bits and pieces of what he’s learned at his many stops and sprinkle those into the 49ers’ profile.

“The [offensive] coordinators in this league, they’re getting harder to defend,” Morris said. “So you’ve got to have some multiplicity in your front. You’ve got to have multiplicity in the back end. You’ve got to be able to do different things.

“I was able to accumulate and acquire a bunch of different ideas and thoughts along my stops with the different people that I’ve worked with. Being able to mix it up, being able to play some four-down stuff, being able to play a bunch of five-down stuff. I think you’ve got to be able to move those chess pieces to stop these really explosive offenses.”

Morris played safety up to the college level at Hofstra, then cut his NFL coaching teeth working with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ defensive backs — under coaches like legendary defensive guru Monte Kiffin and future head coach Mike Tomlin — starting in 2002.

One of the Bucs’ star defensive backs was John Lynch, who’s now the 49ers’ general manager. And one of Morris’ fellow assistants in Tampa was a young Kyle Shanahan, who’s now the 49ers’ head coach. The two formed a bond that’s lasted decades, including shared time on Mike Shanahan’s Washington staff from 2012 to 2014.

Another circle is now complete with this Morris-Shanahan reunion in the Bay Area.

“I was really close to this building from afar,” Morris said. “And Kyle’s definitely one of those people you always want to work with. From our time being in Tampa, when we were both young puppies, or the second time we worked together when we were in D.C., being able to be around his father —the tradition and the culture that they’ve been able to form really molded me throughout my career.”

Kiffin, Tampa Bay’s defensive coordinator, initially taught Morris the principles of his legendary 4-3 “Tampa-2” defense. Its four-man front served as the inspiration for the D-line Shanahan and Lynch implemented when they took over the 49ers in 2017 — and plan to sustain as the defense’s base even with Morris taking the reins.

“We have been a four-down rush team,” Morris said, “and we’ve done a nice job with it.”

Since his formative years in Tampa, Morris has coached both sides of the ball — he was the wide receivers coach under Kyle Shanahan in Atlanta — and held two head-coaching gigs, with the Bucs and the Falcons. He speaks of being “cross-trained” in the coaching arts and often points at his time coordinating the Los Angeles Rams’ defense from 2021 to 2023 as an exercise in developing multiplicity.

Rams coach Sean McVay asked Morris to adopt the defense of his predecessor, Brandon Staley, who guided L.A. to a top defensive ranking in 2020. Staley, a disciple of heralded defensive coordinator Vic Fangio (who was actually with the 49ers from 2011 to 2014, back when Jim Harbaugh was coach), ran a 3-4 front. This was more similar to Morris’ time as Washington’s DB coach, working under 3-4 coordinator Jim Haslett, than it was to the Tampa days.

But Morris made it work, coaching a Rams’ defense that rode a penchant for big plays to a Super Bowl title to close the 2021 season.

So when McVay — one of Shanahan’s good friends and also perhaps his biggest coaching rival — hoisted a Lombardi Trophy, Morris played a big part in it.

Now Morris will try to deliver for the other half of the friend group.

“Nothing would be more satisfying for me personally than to be able to come here and help this organization, this head coach, this general manager, this owner, this team, the players that they have [win a Super Bowl],” Morris said. “When you talk about Fred Warner and Nick Bosa, you get chills just fully thinking about it. That’s what you coach for. That’s the ultimate goal.”

Since coordinator DeMeco Ryans left to becomes the Houston Texans’ head coach following the 2022 season, the 49ers’ defense — ranked as the NFL’s No. 1 unit in 2022 — has sputtered.

Houston’s defense, meanwhile, has ranked near the top of the league since Ryans took over. So yes, defensive coordinators do matter — and the 49ers are on their fifth in five seasons.

However, it’s important to not lump Robert Saleh in with Ryans’ two immediate successors, Steve Wilks (2023) and Nick Sorensen (2024).

Saleh, who returned to San Francisco last season, gave reason to believe that he was turning around the 49ers’ defense prior to a wave of injuries. San Francisco ranked as a top-five unit in a small sample before Bosa’s season-ending injury. While the 49ers pushed out both Wilks and Sorensen after one year, they hoped Saleh would stay — but another head coaching gig came calling.

That’s key context in setting expectations for Morris. He inherits a defense that should be back to full health — and one that’s benefitted from massive reinvestment over the past two offseasons.

Consider that the 49ers have replaced their entire nine-man D-line rotation outside of Bosa over the past 14 months. After going four drafts — from 2021 to 2024 — without selecting a D-lineman in the top-60 picks (Drake Jackson, who’s no longer with the team, went No. 61 in 2022), the 49ers have reopened the faucet.

They spent their first five 2025 picks on defense and three of them — Mykel Williams, Alfred Collins, and CJ West — are lineman. The 49ers then spent two more picks this year on Height and tackle Gracen Halton. They also signed three undrafted free agents to create a competition among young players.

After all the construction dust has settled, the 49ers have the third-youngest defense in the NFL. The clay is in the building. The question revolves around how Morris — reunited in the 49ers’ building with Shanahan, Lynch, and other key cohorts — will mold it.

“The ultimate thing with coaches that really are committed to each other is obsession,” Morris said. “Kyle has an obsession about football that’s just unmatched. And when you have that obsessive personality to be the very best at what you do, I think that’s something that ultimately clicks.”