DeMeco Ryans’ high energy and big grin won’t light up the 49ers' sideline anymore, but the impact he made on the team won’t go away.
Still, his departure hit hard for players as they came to the emotional realization Sunday that their NFC Championship loss to the Philadelphia Eagles likely was their final game together. 49ers linebacker Fred Warner, who grew extremely close to Ryans over the years, reflected back on the biggest lesson he learned from Ryans that will continue to stick with him.
“Aw man, I don’t know if I can pick just one,” Warner said Tuesday. “It was just the perfect match honestly given where I was coming from out of BYU, positionless, I guess you could say, [and] being asked to play the [middle linebacker] position, and a guy who played it at a high level and knew what it took to play at a high level, to help develop me.
“I’m not the player I am today without him.”
Warner’s rookie season in 2018 was the first year Ryans took over as the 49ers’ inside linebackers coach. The All-Pro has credited Ryans for pushing him to find and use his voice to lead the team more, which he did -- and it paid off.
Ryans led a top-ranked defense just one game away from Super Bowl LVII, holding opponents to the fewest yards per game among all teams during the 2022 NFL regular season.
San Francisco 49ers
Defensive end Nick Bosa shared what he will miss most about Ryans.
"I'm just gonna miss his smile every day," Bosa said. "His positivity [and] just his knowledge of the game. I'm gonna miss just how he appreciated the defensive line and how he made sure to make us feel like he appreciated us and he let us know that every day. So it helped us work even harder for him.
"But I trust Kyle [Shanahan] that he’ll replace him with the best guy possible who will have the right mindset and same principles that DeMeco had, and I think DeMeco is going to go build a really good team somewhere else."
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That team will be the Houston Texans after Ryans officially was announced by the team on Tuesday as their sixth head coach in franchise history.
He'll now take his big, contagious smile to Houston and be at the helm of the team that drafted him 17 years ago.