With the firing of general manager Trent Baalke and head coach Chip Kelly on Sunday, most of the discussion surrounding the 49ers is centered around who the organization is going to target as replacements in those two key positions.
ESPN’s John Clayton believes the 49ers need to make a separate hire before searching for a general manager and coach, however, telling The Audible on Monday that CEO Jed York needs to hire a consultant to assist him in the search
“I would be surprised if Jed’s going to do it alone,” Clayton said. “My guess is he would be like a lot of the owners and try to hire a consultant. Now we already know the best consultant in the game Jed Hughes has been hired by Jacksonville. So now do you make the move and go Ernie Accorsi or do you do Charlie Casserly.”
If Clayton was in York’s position, he’d target a former Super Bowl winning coach who got his start in San Francisco.
“If I’m him I would probably look at Mike Holmgren and see if you want to bring him in as a consultant to help the search,” Clayton. “Now they should probably bring in Mike Holmgren to either do the job or some kind of a job. I have to think if you’re Jed York, and you’ve had the two failures that you’ve had right now, you need a consultant to be able to try to give you ideas to make this work. So we’ll see if Jed does that, cause I can’t imagine that Jed’s gonna try to do it alone.”
Holmgren’s last front office job was as team president of the Cleveland Browns from 2010-2012. Holmgren worked under Bill Walsh and George Seifert as the 49ers quarterbacks coach from 1986-1988 and offensive coordinator 1989-1991.
Listen to the full interview below.
