The 49ers’ latest near miss costs defensive coordinator Steve Wilks his job.
In recent seasons, the San Francisco 49ers have painfully neared returning to the illustrious past of the team. Their most heartbreaking near-miss happened on Sunday in Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas, where they lost to the Kansas City Chiefs after almost five whole quarters of play.
However, the 49ers have already made it clear that they intend to do more than just keep things as they are and hope for better results the following season as they recover from their most recent postseason setback and start to retool for another shot at winning their first Super Bowl victory in thirty years.
On Wednesday, the team fired defensive coordinator Steve Wilks, according to coach Kyle Shanahan. The 49ers had some growing pains on defense during the regular season after Wilks replaced DeMeco Ryans, and they struggled on that end of the ball during the NFC playoffs, so the departure did not come as a complete surprise.
That a club would make such a significant alteration to its coaching staff three days after going so close to winning the Super Bowl, however, qualified as shocking.
Never before has a squad won three straight Super Bowls. The Chiefs are about to arrive.
Shanahan told reporters, “We felt pretty strongly that this was a decision that was best for our organization,” as stated on the official website. “I came to a realization, even though it was one I didn’t want to make. The optimum course of action for [the] organization is a different one.
After the Houston Texans hired Ryans as their coach in the previous offseason, the 49ers hired Wilks. After Robert Saleh was signed by the New York Jets as their coach after the 2020 season, Ryans took over as the 49ers’ defensive coordinator for two seasons.
Wilks has just finished a term as the Carolina Panthers’ acting head coach. He put forth a compelling case to be kept on as the head coach full-time. However, Panthers owner David Tepper passed him over in the offseason and hired Frank Reich instead, only to fire Reich 11 games into the current campaign.
In February 2022, Brian Flores, the former coach of the Miami Dolphins, filed a racial discrimination case against the NFL and franchises, which Wilks, the former coach of the Arizona Cardinals, joined. According to the provisions of Wilks’s employment contract, U.S. District Judge Valerie Caproni decided in March of last year that his claims against the Cardinals had to be arbitrated by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell.
Under Wilks’ leadership, the 49ers finished the regular season with the eighth-best total defense in the NFL. Under Ryans, they had finished first in the league in total defense in 2022. Shanahan chastised Wilks for his disastrous all-out blitz call in an October loss to the Minnesota Vikings, which was the start of the 49ers’ three-game losing streak after a 5-0 start. At the time, Wilks expressed his desire to “take it back.” At Shanahan’s suggestion, Wilks changed his approach during the season to call the defensive coverages from the sideline as opposed to the coaches’ booth.
