Greg Roman to interview with Browns, while Rams have requested permission

San Francisco 49ers offensive coordinator Greg Roman will continue his tour of the league with two more interviews in the coming days. Roman will interview with the Cleveland Browns on Monday, and the St. Louis Rams have requested permission to interview Roman for their own vacant offensive coordinator position.

This follows interviews for OC roles with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Jacksonville Jaguars, and an interview with the Buffalo Bills for their vacant head coach position. Matt Barrows suggested Roman very well could end up interviewing with Philadelphia if OC Pat Shurmur is hired for either the Bills or Raiders head coach positions. Although the 49ers have not officially said anything about his future with the team, Maiocco said he was not going to be back in 2015. He is still under contract in the meantime.

If the 49ers hire an offensive-minded head coach, the offensive coordinator and quarterback coach roles are valuable for management and implementation purposes. However, they are likely less so for the broader scheme and philosophy issues. One of the questions surrounding Seahawks DC Dan Quinn is how much of his work is him, and how much is simply implementing Pete Carroll's defensive vision. Quinn still holds value to Carroll, but for a guy in his position, it raises some questions about what he would do moving forward.

However, if the 49ers end up hiring a defensive-minded head coach, his decision on an offensive coordinator is going to be absolutely critical for this team to take a step forward. The 49ers offense was not improving under Greg Roman and Jim Harbaugh. The next offensive coordinator will have quite a few options at his disposal with this offense. The team likely will no longer have Mike Iupati on the offensive line, but the rest of the unit likely returns in 2015. With a healthy offensive line (always a big IF), an OC could do some great things with this group. And if it happened to lead to that OC in turn getting a head coaching job soon thereafter, well, there are worse things to have happen.