As they’ve cycled through quarterbacks, the 49ers’ top-ranked defense has remained a constant. It has everything to do with the man in charge of it and his younger self.
At the Texans’ football headquarters, only the brave called the middle linebacker by his actual birth name. This destroyer of running backs and setter of standards wasn’t “DeMeco Ryans” at the office. Nor was he “Meco,” the nickname his many of his friends still use. Instead, everyone in Houston, from owner to custodian, called him “Cap.”
It stood for captain, naturally, and it spoke to Ryans’s bearing, the force that emanated from deep within.