Ji'Ayir Brown

From 11-game rookie spot start to 16-game starter: tackles up every year — 56 → 71 → 79.

A third-round pick out of Penn State, Brown hit the ground running — 56 combined tackles in just 11 rookie games as the 49ers' Super Bowl-bound defense found a snap-eater at safety. Each of the next two years the workload grew: 71 in 2024, 79 in 2025.

The pass-deflection line is the steady one: 5 → 6 → 6 PDs across his three seasons, the marker of a safety who's getting his hands on intermediate throws even if the takeaways haven't piled up yet.

79 combined tackles in 2025 — a new career high and the most of any 49ers safety.

Brown's 2025 line — 45 solo, 34 assisted, 79 combined — is a career best across the board. The 45 solos alone are 11 more than his rookie total and 3 more than 2024.

He also posted his first career forced fumble in 2025 along with 2 tackles-for-loss, the start of the splash-play column that's been the missing piece of his profile.

Solo-tackle rate climbing each year (61% → 59% → 57%) — but the raw volume keeps growing.

The solo share has crept down slightly as Brown plays more snaps in the box and around the line, where help arrives faster. But the raw solo count has gone up every year — 34, 42, 45 — meaning the chase-down rate has held steady even as deeper alignments would push toward more assists.

206 combined tackles through 44 career games — averaging 4.7 per game across three seasons.

Across 44 career games (the 11 rookie starts plus full 17- and 16-game slates), Brown has 206 combined tackles. That's a 4.7 tackles/game career rate — a number that puts him in the upper tier of safeties on a per-game basis, even with the slow rookie ramp dragging the average down.

Strip the 2023 sample and his 2024-25 rate is 4.55 tackles/game over 33 starts — durable, every-down volume from a second-contract candidate.

79 tackles in 2025 — second-most on the 49ers defense behind only Fred Warner's snap count.

On a defense headlined by Fred Warner and Nick Bosa, the safety with the second-most defensive workload by tackle count was Brown. That's a structural signal — SF has trusted him to play the deep-half / robber assignments that produce the cleanup tackles, and he's there for every snap.

The scouting question now: is he the long-term complement to Talanoa Hufanga, or is the 2025 line a contract-year peak? The track record — three straight seasons of growth, every box checked but takeaways — argues for the former.