49ers to Promote DeMeco Ryans to Defensive Coordinator

The 49ers had Robert Saleh's replacement ready.

Grant Cohn | Jan 15, 2021

The 49ers had Robert Saleh's replacement ready.

Just after the New York Jets announced they'd hired Saleh as their new head coach, news broke that the 49ers had promoted linebackers coach DeMeco Ryans to defensive coordinator.

Ryans, 36, initially came to the 49ers as a defensive quality control coach in 2017. In 2018, the 49ers promoted him to linebackers coach. So he has ascended quickly through the coaching ranks, just as Saleh did.

Saleh was a defensive quality control coach from 2011 to 2013, then a linebackers coach from 2014 to 2016, then he became a defensive coordinator and now he's a head coach.

49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan believes Ryans' career will follow a similar trajectory. "It's a matter of time before DeMeco will be a head coach," Shanahan said on Jan. 4.

Shanahan knows what he's talking about. Remember, he hired and developed Saleh.

Ryans played 10 seasons in the NFL as a middle linebacker -- six seasons with the Houston Texans and four seasons with the Philadelphia Eagles. He went to two Pro Bowls and was the 2006 AP Defensive Rookie of the Year.

Now Ryans will have to coordinate the 49ers defense all by himself, because Saleh is gone and Kyle Shanahan is an offensive coach. If Ryans succeeds, he certainly will get head-coaching offers just as Saleh did.

But Ryans is two years younger than Saleh was when Saleh became the defensive coordinator in 2017. Ryans probably will have growing pains just as Saleh did. And the 49ers defense probably will get worse before it gets better.

Published Jan 15, 2021

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.