More than three weeks after explaining his goals for the franchise that needs both a new coach and a new General Manager, 49ers CEO Jed York has address the situation again, at a time when the team still doesn’t have a coach or a G.M.
Via Cam Inman of BayAreaNewsGroup.com, York spoke at a San Jose event on Tuesday. He said all that he could, given that it’s widely believed that a wink-nod agreement exists with a new coach, who will soon be directly involved in picking his G.M. under the guise of a second interview for the job he already has.
“The message is we’re going to re-establish a championship culture,” York said, via Inman. “We’re not going to do that by filling a job quickly. We need to be patient. We need to be willing to wait.
“And when we get the right people, we’ll start putting everything into place.”
After the Super Bowl, they’ll have the right person to coach the team or, more accurately, the one leading candidate who hadn’t backed out of the job and then leveraged his role as the stand-alone cheese into plenty of cash and other considerations from the club.
While not legally binding and technically prohibited by league rules, the job belongs to Falcons offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan. In Atlanta on Saturday, Shanahan will meet with Vikings executive George Paton and Cardinals executive Terry McDonough to determine, as a practical matter, which guy will serve as the optimal table-setter for Shanahan. It remains possible that others will get involved (former Bucs G.M. Mark Dominik has been mentioned), now that it’s clear that Shanahan has the job -- and that Shanahan will be running show.
Full control over the roster is believed to have been promised to Shanahan. The manner in which the documents are drawn up could deviate from that, however, if Paton, McDonough, or whoever gets the G.M. job needs to have final say in writing in order to leave their current teams. (Dominik wouldn’t need it, because he’s not currently working for a team.)
A similar situation unfolded eight years ago in Cleveland, where coach Eric Mangini unofficially had control and G.M. George Kokinis had contractual control, in order to justify his exit from Baltimore. The friends (former) repeatedly butted heads over personnel decisions, culminating in Kokinis being escorted from the building during their first season together.
The 49ers need to have this one figured out before either Shanahan or the new G.M. enter the building in Santa Clara. Otherwise, it could be Jim Harbaugh and Trent Baalke all over again.