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The 49ers Want their Next Defensive Coordinator to be Experienced

In retrospect, Nick Sorensen was doomed from the start.

Grant Cohn

Jan 5, 2025; Glendale, Arizona, USA; San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan against the Arizona Cardinals at State Farm Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images
Jan 5, 2025; Glendale, Arizona, USA; San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan against the Arizona Cardinals at State Farm Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images / Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images
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In retrospect, Nick Sorensen was doomed from the start.

He had never been a defensive coordinator in his life, and he had to take over a veteran team with Super Bowl aspirations that had zero time to wait for him to learn on the job. And he had lots to learn.

When the 49ers hired Robert Saleh as their defensive coordinator in 2017, he never had held that position, either. But the 49ers were a young, rebuilding team back then. Now they're much different.

That's why Kyle Shanahan is looking to hire a more experienced defensive coordinator this time around.

“Yeah, I think some of the stuff that, just where we're at, some of the decisions that we’ve got to make and things like that, I think having the experience of going through this before, building things before, I think is definitely a bonus for me," Shanahan said on Wednesday. "It helps me with some stuff. So that's stuff I will look into. But again, you always, regardless, you don't want to put just any handcuffs on your decision. You're going to always try to figure out the best one. So, you’ve got ideas going into that, but just being so early I'm going to have an opportunity to talk to a number of guys too, so we'll see what that leads us to.”

I'm guessing the 49ers would love to hire Saleh if he doesn't get a head coaching job. Otherwise, I wouldn't be surprised if they were to hire Jeff Ulbrich or Gus Bradley, two coaches who have extensive coordinator experience.

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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.

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