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What Brandon Staley Will Do for the 49ers

The 49ers haven't necessarily invested much in Staley, but he still will have a critical role on the coaching staff.

Grant Cohn

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The 49ers hired Brandon Staley today, but not to be their defensive coordinator or to call their defensive plays. So what will he do?

Before we answer that question, it's important to point out that the 49ers probably aren't paying Staley much. Why should they? The Chargers have to fork over another $4 million to Staley in 2024, which essentially means they're paying for him to work for the 49ers next season. How generous.

So the 49ers haven't necessarily invested much in Staley, but he still will have a critical role on the coaching staff.

Don't expect Staley to be in the meetings during the week on the sideline on game days interacting with players. That's what new defensive coordinator Nick Sorensen will do. Expect Staley to be in the coach's booth on game days where he can see all 22 players and help Sorensen make adjustments.

Remember, Wilks wanted to be in the coach's booth and called plays from there for the first half of the season. Then the 49ers forced him to call plays from the sideline. Now they'll basically have a coordinator on the field and one in the booth as well.

In addition, Staley will help Sorensen game plan for teams he's not so familiar with, teams such as the Chiefs. That's because Staley faced them twice a season the past three years when he was coaching the Chargers. It's hard to imagine Sorensen out-coaching Andy Reid in the Super Bowl if they face each other again. Staley will give the 49ers some help and an extra set of eyes for cheap.

Sounds like a good deal.

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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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