Bill Belichick declined Kyle Shanahan’s offer to become 49ers’ defensive coordinator

Bill Belichick is not coaching this season after being in the league for nearly 50 years.


Bill Belichick declined Kyle Shanahan’s offer to become 49ers’ defensive coordinator

Bill Belichick declined Kyle Shanahan’s offer to become 49ers' defensive coordinator (image via Imago)

Bill Belichick has coached in the NFL for as long as anyone can remember. In all those years, he has done nothing but coach the New England Patriots to 6 Super Bowl wins. Despite all that success, the legendary coach is without a job this season. However, San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan wanted to take a chance.

Shanahan was a guest on the podcast, The TK Show. During their conversation, host Tim Kawakami asked him about Bill Belichick being without a job and if he had approached him for a role on the 49ers.

I did, I threw it out to him. He loves football so much. I can't believe he's not a head coach of a team right now. The last thing you want to do is insult someone like Bill Belichick. But I know he just loves ball in its simplest form, so I threw it all out to him, whatever he wanted to do, (including defensive coordinator). I was like 'Would you be interested?' And he was very nice and appreciative, but he politely turned me down.
Kyle Shanahan said.

This suggests Kyle Shanahan wanted to tap into the prospect of getting the 72-year-old coach as a defensive coordinator. The very position that created the legend of Belichick’s coaching abilities.

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Long before Bill Belichick became the head coach of the New England Patriots, he was the defensive coordinator for the New York Giants. There, he built the Giants to become one of the best defenses in the league. Yes, he had otherworldly pass rushing monster Lawrence Taylor in the squad.

That said, great Super Bowl-winning defenses are not just the result of one player. Kyle Shanahan, knowing this, offered Belichick the Defensive Coordinator’s position. However, the Super Bowl winning coach declined.

Kyle Shanahan wants better defense from the 49ers

Bill Belichick declining the position of Defensive Coordinator suggests Kyle Shanahan knows what his team’s Achilles heel was, last season. It is not that the San Francisco 49ers had a bad defense. Rather, they could not play to their full potential in the closing stretch of the season, especially the Super Bowl. That too for a team having multiple Pro Bowlers.

San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan knows his defense needs to be elite to win a Super Bowl
San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan knows his defense needs to be elite to win a Super Bowl (image via Imago)

That necessitated a change in the coordinator position, leading to Steve Wilks being replaced by Nick Sorensen. The hope is that Sorensen, who has played the game in the past and has a good relationship with players, can get the defense back to where it has the potential to be.

Had the defense been elite right up to the Super Bowl, the talk this offseason would have been about the 49ers building up to repeat. Instead, Kyle Shanahan had to reach out unsuccessfully to one of the best defensive minds the game has seen in decades.

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