After one of the most dramatic offseason coaching carousels in recent memory, the 49ers’ decision to wait it out for Robert Saleh finally paid off.
Robert Saleh is apparently going back to the San Francisco 49ers.
But it wasn’t exactly a seamless process.
The Niners somewhat backed themselves into a corner at the end of the 2023 season when they opted to fire then-defensive coordinator Steve Wilks after he and head coach Kyle Shanahan failed to be on the same page.
Having just come off a Super Bowl loss, most of the quality coordinators were long gone, leading the Niners to promote from within, going with an inexperienced option in Nick Sorensen.
Sorensen’s one-year experiment failed. His firing, paired with San Francisco missing the playoffs altogether at the end of 2024, gave Shanahan and Co. an early jump on finding his replacement.
Yet the 49ers didn’t exactly take advantage, all but honing in on Saleh, Shanahan’s defensive coordinator from 2017 through 2020. The recently ousted New York Jets head coach appeared awfully close to landing the Jacksonville Jaguars’ head-coaching job, made all the more precarious in the Jags’ decision to fire general manager Trent Baalke. Only Jacksonville pivoted, bringing in a preferred candidate to be its new head coach, former Tampa Bay Buccaneers offensive coordinator Liam Coen, thereby denying Saleh the opportunity.
The 49ers’ decision to wait it out ended up paying off in the long run. And it certainly was a wild few days.
49ers poised to re-hire Robert Saleh as defensive coordinator
The ultimate reunion was foreshadowed by The Athletic’s Mike Silver on Jan. 23:
I expect the 49ers to rehire Robert Saleh as their defensive coordinator soon
— Michael Silver (@MikeSilver) January 24, 2025
The Niners appeared set on Saleh from the get-go, especially with a general lack of interviews elsewhere with other candidates. While that carried risks, especially the longer it took for pen to be put to paper, it appears Shanahan was OK with the idea Saleh could take his time trying to land an acceptable head-coaching opportunity.
Saleh’s near-acceptance of the Jaguars’ job does reveal he’s still regarded as a likable head-coaching candidate, perhaps only barely missing out on this offseason’s coaching cycle.
After a successful defensive tenure in the Bay Area under Shanahan, previously, the 49ers are probably just worried about yet another Saleh departure in a year’s time, not now.
True, it’s fair to wonder if San Francisco will be in a position to search again a year from now, especially if Saleh becomes a hot name, as was the case after the 2020 season in which he led a banged-up 49ers defense to respectability.
However, that’s a problem for another time.
