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49ers Could End Up Promoting Brandon Staley to Defensive Coordinator

This probably isn't what you want to read.
Grant Cohn|
Oct 16, 2023; Inglewood, California, USA; Los Angeles Chargers coach Brandon Staley watches from the sidelines against the Dallas Cowboys in the first half at SoFi Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images
Oct 16, 2023; Inglewood, California, USA; Los Angeles Chargers coach Brandon Staley watches from the sidelines against the Dallas Cowboys in the first half at SoFi Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images | Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

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San Francisco 49ers

This probably isn't what you want to read.

If the 49ers can't hire Robert Saleh as their next defensive coordinator, they likely will promote assistant head coach Brandon Staley to the position.

Saleh clearly is the 49ers' top choice, but he currently is a candidate for three different head-coaching vacancies -- the Raiders, the Cowboys and the Jaguars. He currently has a second interview scheduled with the Jaguars scheduled for Friday. So the 49ers might have to wait for Saleh for a while.

In the meantime, most of the top defensive coordinator candidates will get scooped up. In the past few days, Jeff Ulbrich has become the Falcons defensive coordinator, Lou Anarumo has become the Colts defensive coordinator and Dennis Allen has become the Chicago Bears defensive coordinator. So if the 49ers don't land Saleh, they probably have many other candidates to choose from.

Staley is not an exciting candidate. He was an abject failure as the Chargers head coach, which is why he had to take a job as the 49ers assistant head coach. No other team has shown interest in him as a defensive coordinator during this hiring cycle, so if the 49ers promote him, they will have promoted someone that no one else wanted for the second season in a row.

If the 49ers ultimately make Staley their defensive coordinator, don't be surprised if they miss the playoffs next season, too. They need an infusion of ideas and enthusiasm that Staley simply cannot provide.

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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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