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The 49ers will Not Retain Nick Sorensen on their Coaching Staff

Grand opening, grand closing.
Grant Cohn|
Dec 30, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers defensive coordinator Nick Sorensen after the game against the Detroit Lions at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Sergio Estrada-Imagn Images
Dec 30, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers defensive coordinator Nick Sorensen after the game against the Detroit Lions at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Sergio Estrada-Imagn Images | Sergio Estrada-Imagn Images

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San Francisco 49ers

Grand opening, grand closing.

After just one season as the 49ers defensive coordinator, Nick Sorensen has been fired and will not be retained on the coaching staff in another capacity according to NBC Sports Bay Area. Head coach Kyle Shanahan expressed a desire to keep Sorensen as the special teams coordinator, a position the 49ers have yet to fill, but Sorensen either declined the demotion or the 49ers changed their minds and rescinded the offer.

Either way, Sorensen is out.

In retrospect, the 49ers never should have promoted Sorensen to defensive coordinator in the first place. He had no experience in that role and the 49ers had Super Bowl aspirations -- they needed someone seasoned, not someone learning on the job.

Sorensen's defense gave up the fourth-most points in the league -- the 49ers had no choice but to fire him, especially after the defense collapsed in the final few games. But he had tons of injuries he had to deal with. Plus he had to play linebacker De'Vondre Campbell, one of the worst starters in the NFL, simply because the front office signed him instead of someone good such as Bobby Wagner who was available. That's not Sorensen's fault.

Still, there's a reason we haven't heard any other teams express interest in him to be their defensive coordinator. He's a defensive backs coach and a good one. When he focused on the 49ers' secondary, they ranked among the league leaders in takeaways.

Don't be surprised if Sorensen takes a year off and returns to the NFL in 2026 as a defensive backs coach somewhere else.

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Grant Cohn
GRANT COHN

Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn's channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers' official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.

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