The San Francisco 49ers are being ranked among the worst options for a head coach candidate heading into 2017. They lack much in the way of skill positions players, and the roster as a whole is a mess. Add in questions about Jed York’s involvement in the team, and it is easy to see on the surface why this might not be a good place to work.
However, the team is getting some intriguing interviews, including New England Patriots offensive coordinator. Some think he got his chance and won’t ever be a good head coach, but he would not be the first coach to find success on his second go-around.
But what about all the issues in Santa Clara? MMQB columnist Albert Breer was on CSN New England recently to discuss McDaniels and why the 49ers role would be attractive to him. Breer is a national columnist, but got his start covering the NFL in Boston. He may not have the exact ear of Patriots folks, but I give him a little more credibility than I would other folks in this regard.
Breer said he thinks the most attractive job to McDaniels could be the 49ers. He acknowledged it sounded funny to say that, but he offered some details. The host asked him if McDaniels went to San Francisco he would be doing the personnel, bringing in his own personnel guy. That started Breer’s answer. You can watch the video above, but here is a transcript of his comments.
“If he goes to San Francisco, he will be on board with whoever the personnel guy is, or he won’t take the job. Maybe he won’t pick the personnel guy, but he’ll obviously have an idea of who the personnel guy’s gonna be. The big thing here is that, that part of it, that he’s not going in with somebody else’s general manager. But maybe bigger, it’s a clean slate situation. You can build that thing from the ground up. When he went to Denver, I mean remember, Brandon Marshall was there, Jay Cutler was there, Ryan Clady was there. If you go to Jacksonville, I mean there’s already a core in place. What do you think of Blake Bortles? That’s gonna be a big part of the decision-making process there. If you go to Los Angeles, Jared Goff’s there.
“In San Francisco, if he goes to San Francisco, not only is there the advantage that, OK, my personnel guy is there, but also, there’s a completely clean slate. It’s like an expansion team. You pick your own quarterback, there aren’t any bad contracts you can’t get out of. So you can basically build the thing from the ground up. It’s attractive for the same reason that the Jaguars job was attractive when Dave Caldwell and Gus Bradley went there in 2013.”