Balance is the word that coaches preach every summer and rarely get to enjoy by October, but the San Francisco 49ers have found it in a way few teams around the league can claim.

Both the 49ers' offense and defense now rank third in the NFL on CBS Sports through five weeks of the 2026 season.

It is the kind of symmetry that tends to separate legitimate contenders from teams merely riding a hot start, and with San Francisco sitting at an unblemished 5-0, the numbers are beginning to match the record.

The offense has been the more familiar story because a Kyle Shanahan unit humming along near the top of the league has become something of an annual expectation in Santa Clara.

San Francisco has put up 154 points across its first five games, an average north of 30 per outing, and it has done so against a range of opponents and game scripts, from the 27-7 rout of the Rams in the season opener to the 35-13 handling of Miami and the 36-30 shootout against Arizona that required the offense to keep its foot on the gas all afternoon.

Even in last Sunday’s 32-29 slugfest in Seattle, a game that carried early NFC West implications and featured more than its share of momentum swings, the 49ers found enough on offense to walk out of Lumen Field with their perfect record intact.

What makes this version of the team more dangerous, though, is that the defense has carried its share of the weight rather than leaning on the offense to bail it out.

This is a unit that limped through 2025, finishing near the bottom of the league in pressure rate and recording just 20 sacks while Fred Warner missed most of the season with a broken ankle, so seeing it climb into the top three represents one of the more significant turnarounds in the league.

The return of a healthy Warner, the reunion with Dre Greenlaw, and the free agent additions of Nate Hobbs and Jack Jones have given new defensive coordinator Raheem Morris a deeper and more experienced group to work with, and the results have shown up on the scoreboard, with San Francisco allowing fewer than 19 points per game through five weeks.

The 24-14 win over Denver in Week 4 might be the clearest snapshot of what this team can be when both sides are clicking, as the defense kept a capable Broncos team in check while the offense did just enough to control the game without needing to be spectacular.

None of this guarantees anything in mid-October, and the 49ers will be quick to point out that the Seattle game showed how thin the margins can be in a division that rarely gives anything away.

Still, a team ranked third on both sides of the ball has no obvious weakness to exploit, and that is a difficult puzzle for any opponent to solve.

The next test comes Monday night at Levi’s Stadium against the Washington Commanders, giving San Francisco a national stage to show that its balanced start is no fluke before a road trip to Atlanta and the bye week arrive.