Which 49ers assistant becomes a head coach next?

Kyle Shanahan has to be getting used to assistants leaving the 49ers for head-coaching jobs elsewhere. Who is next on the list, though?

2023 will mark the third consecutive year in which head coach Kyle Shanahan and the San Francisco 49ers have lost a coordinator to a head-coaching position elsewhere.

Entering 2021, it was former defensive coordinator Robert Saleh who departed and took on the New York Jets. A year later, offensive coordinator Mike McDaniel left for the Miami Dolphins. Then, after helping lead the NFL’s best defense in 2022, coordinator DeMeco Ryans got his opportunity as head coach of the Houston Texans.

One of the byproducts of having a successful team is that other squads want to pluck from the tree, and Shanahan’s coaching tree is indeed growing.

Where will it grow next, though?

Will 49ers lose another assistant to a head-coaching job?

Ryans was already considered an up-and-coming candidate for a head-coaching position entering the 2022 season, even turning down what would have been a second interview with the Minnesota Vikings that year and staying put with the Niners.

With him gone, it’s tougher to see who might be the next name worth looking at. One of Shanahan’s offensive assistants, Bobby Slowik, is now joining Ryans in Houston.

It’s probable that Slowik would have been the next name on the rise in coaching ranks. Also, the coach who is replacing him, former Denver Broncos quarterbacks coach Klint Kubiak, could potentially be a riser in a couple of years.

Defensive line coach Kris Kocurek is a respected name, but he has never risen above the ranks of a position coach, and the scuttlebutt is that he won’t want to. Perhaps that’s why he opted not to follow Ryans and Slowik to the Texans for promotion to defensive coordinator.

There are two names on Shanahan’s staff, however, who do have prior head-coaching experience: Anthony Lynn and the recently hired Steve Wilks.

Lynn, who has been the head coach of both the Buffalo Bills and Los Angeles Chargers, might get a third shot at some point, but he was left off interview circles so far this offseason.

Wilks, meanwhile, was the Carolina Panthers’ interim head coach in the wake of that team’s firing of former head coach Matt Rhule early last season, and Wilks also had a less-than-exciting one-year term as head coach of the Arizona Cardinals in 2018.

Perhaps these two could be next in line for a head-coaching spot, but it seems more likely the next San Francisco assistant to find such a position will have to work his way up through the ranks for the next couple of years.

Maybe that’s good for Shanahan and the 49ers, though.