It wasn’t the sexy hire some had talked about – there was no Rex Ryan interview, at least none that was reported – but the San Francisco 49ers have hired their new defensive coordinator. And they’ve hired a new assistant head coach.
And they’re not the same man.
The Associated Press and other media outlets are reporting the 49ers have hired from within, naming Nick Sorensen as the new defensive coordinator, and former Los Angeles Chargers head coach Brandon Staley as their new assistant head coach (49ers promote Sorensen to DC and hire Staley as an assistant).
The franchise fired former coordinator Steve Wilks three days after losing Super Bowl LVIII to the Kansas City Chiefs – his only year in charge of the defense. To be fair, Wilks’ defense went from one of the best in the league during the regular season to having near-collapses in all three playoff games (vs. Green Bay and vs. Detroit at home, and then in the second half of the Super Bowl against Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs after shutting them down in the first half), struggling tremendously against the run.
Signs that someone would pay with their job might have been told earlier in the year during the Niners’ three-game losing streak. But the 49ers’ defense, in the regular season, ranked third in points allowed.
The fact that the franchise promoted from within and didn’t hire an outsider, like Ryan or another well-known name, might have been forecasted, since when Robert Saleh left for the New York Jets head coaching job a few years ago, DeMeco Ryans was promoted. Ryans had since left to be head coach of the Houston Texans, to great success.
As for Sorensen, he was a former NFL defensive back, spent eight seasons as a defensive backs coach in Seattle before serving as special teams coach for Jacksonville in 2021.
He came to the 49ers as a defensive assistant in 2022 as a linebackers coach during a time period when Johnny Holland was missing time with cancer. Then, Sorensen coached nickel backs and the passing defense in the 2023 campaign.
Staley, of course, is more familiar to NFL fans as head coach of the Chargers. He was the defensive coordinator in 2020 for the Los Angeles Rams, a student under former 49ers defensive coordinator Vic Fangio. It might make 49ers fans nervous that the Chargers’ defense struggled under Staley, who went 24-24 in his tenure as the Chargers’ head coach.
