The 49ers Interview Noah Pauley to be their Offensive Coordinator

I feel bad for Pauley.
Iowa State's wide receiver coach Noah Pauley talks to media at the school football facility on Wednesday, April 10, 2024, in Ames, Iowa.
Iowa State's wide receiver coach Noah Pauley talks to media at the school football facility on Wednesday, April 10, 2024, in Ames, Iowa. / Nirmalendu Majumdar/Ames Tribune / USA TODAY NETWORK
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The 49ers intend to name Klay Kubiak their offensive coordinator -- head coach Kyle Shanahan said so last week.

But before they promote Kubiak, the 49ers have to conduct a formal round of interviews for the position. Those are the NFL's rules. And so, on Monday they interviewed Iowa State wide receivers coach and pass game coordinator Noah Pauley for the vacant offensive coordinator job.

I feel bad for Pauley. He has zero chance to get the job. The 49ers interviewed him simply because they have to interview someone before they promote Kubiak. I wonder how many coaches turned down the 49ers' interview requests before Pauley accepted his. At least he's on the NFL's radar now.

Pauley has coached at Iowa State since 2023, so he did not overlap with Purdy. Before coaching at Iowa State, Pauley was the wide receivers coach at North Dakota State where he did overlap with Trey Lance. Maybe that's what brought Pauley to the 49ers' attention.

Still, it would be one heck of a jump to go from passing game coordinator in college to offensive coordinator in the NFL. Pauley might need a few more years of experience before he's ready to make the leap to the NFL, if he ever makes the leap to the NFL.

I expect the 49ers officially will name Kubiak their offensive coordinator some time in the next few weeks. Realistically, they can take as much time as they want considering he already essentially is their offensive coordinator -- they simply haven't given him the title yet. His job description will not change according to Shanahan.

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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.