3 moves SF 49ers should make to shake up front office
By Peter Panacy
The SF 49ers face quite an uncertain future within their front office this offseason, yet these three moves could help with continuity in 2020.
SF 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan is finally starting to grow his own coaching tree, and 2020 is going to be a year in which a significant portion of his staff could find itself elsewhere next season.
The biggest name, of course, is defensive coordinator Robert Saleh.
Saleh has already lined up multiple interviews for head-coaching vacancies around the league, including ones with the Atlanta Falcons and Detroit Lions. Considering the masterclass he put together in 2020, boasting a top-five defense, at least in terms of total yards allowed, despite the lengthy list of serious injuries the team suffered, it makes more than enough sense for one of those teams to grab Saleh in an attempt to shake up their own front offices.
Shanahan is already anticipating Saleh moves on. The head coach stated as much during his post-Week 17 press conference in advance of Saleh’s upcoming interviews.
Yet that’s not the only pending change potentially facing San Francisco this offseason.
Saleh could take with him a number of assistants, essentially “promoting” coaching personnel to coordinator roles and so on. In addition to those possibilities, the Niners could face some internal transitions within the rest of the front office under general manager John Lynch.
Those, too, present their own unique challenges Shanahan, Lynch and the rest of the SF 49ers will face early in 2021.
Yet there are some plausible solutions to the would-be departures, and the Niners would be wise to explore these three front-office options to absorb whatever changes could come their way.