The 49ers’ starting safeties in Super Bowl 54 were a dynamic duo in high school too

In 2019, the defense of the NFC champion San Francisco 49ers allowed opposing offenses to gain 20+ yards on just 43 plays. That’s about 20 plays fewer than the average team and three fewer than any team:

The two safeties largely responsible for the 49ers being the league’s stingiest defense against big plays are free safety Jimmie Ward and strong safety Jaquiski Tartt.

Ward took a roundabout path. He was the 49ers’ first-round pick in the 2014 NFL Draft and spent his first few years bouncing all over the secondary.

His first couple years were marred by foot problems amid a transition to nickelback and covering slot receivers. Under Chip Kelly in Ward’s third season, he became a starting cornerback, but eventually suffered a broken clavicle. And finally, once Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch took over the team in 2017, Ward was moved to his natural position of free safety, only to suffer a season-ending broken left forearm in each of Shanahan’s first two seasons.

His 2019 outlook initially wasn’t appearing a whole lot sunnier when, in the offseason, he suffered another broken clavicle. He subsequently broke a finger that sidelined him for the first three games of the regular season. But when he returned to the lineup following the Niners’ Week 4 bye, he hit the ground running. It’s not a coincidence his return aligned with the pass defense’s historically great October.

Combined with his strong safety running mate Tartt — a second-round pick the year after Ward — the back end of the secondary was completely in sync all season. The chemistry and communication the two showed as the last line of defense was palpable. And there’s good reason for that. That cohesion between the two had been honed long before they arrived in the Bay Area.

You see, there’s a school in Mobile, Alabama, called Davidson High. The safety duo for their football team back in the late aughts? Why, it was none other than Ward and Tartt.

That’s right, Ward and Tartt went from being a safety duo together in high school, then years later teamed up again to become the safety duo for what they helped turn into a Super Bowl defense. It goes without saying the odds of such a phenomenon occurring are miniscule.

For a single high school to have both of their safeties go on to play college ball is unlikely enough. Then for both to flourish enough there to become high draft picks in the NFL adds another incredible layer.

But for the same team to have drafted them both, and for them both to have blossomed into upper-echelon, starting safeties in a Super Bowl is simply unfathomable.

Interestingly enough, that’s not the only position group on the 49ers’ defense that boasts two stalwarts who teamed up while student-athletes. Interior defensive linemen DeForest Buckner and Arik Armstead also played together at the University of Oregon, though collegiate positionmates ultimately reconnecting in the NFL is far more likely than a high school version doing so.

Now there have been NFL teammates who happened to go to the same high school before. Eli Manning and Odell Beckham Jr. formed a dynamic connection for five years in New York and happened to go to the same high school, albeit at different times. Browns quarterbacks Baker Mayfield and Garrett Gilbert went to the same high school, though also at different times, and only one of them would ever be on the football field at a time anyway.

But two men having played a tightly connected position together in both high school and the Super Bowl is something we’ve perhaps never seen nor will ever see again.

If the 49ers are able to keep Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs’ big-play offense under wraps in Super Bowl LIV, you’ll know it’s in large part thanks to a couple safeties that’ve been doing their thing together since adolescence.