After a tough three-plus season stint as the New York Jets' head coach, Robert Saleh landed back in San Francisco as the 49ers' defensive coordinator early this offseason. He spent four seasons as the Niners' defensive coordinator at the beginning of head coach Kyle Shanahan's tenure as head coach (2017-2020), with back-to-back seasons guiding a top-five scoring and pass defense to bolster his head coaching candidacy.
The 49ers have wasted no time making changes as free agency has come and the official start of the 2025 league year is here. On defensive side of the ball, the list of departed players is long and possibly not yet 100 percent complete.
But general manager John Lynch was open about what was coming this offseason, with a tightening up of the cash spending that was prevalent over the last few years in an effort to pay off a window to win a Super Bowl.
When Saleh started his first stint as the defensive coordinator in San Francisco, he was taking over a unit that had allowed a league-high in yards and points the previous season.
He's taking on a similar task now, as the 49ers finished bottom-10 in the league in in points allowed (29th), sacks (23rd), third down defense (24th), takeaways (26th), red zone touchdown rate (31st) and rushing touchdowns allowed (31st) last season.
Robert Saleh knew a teardown of the 49ers' defense was coming
As Eric Branch of the San Francisco Chronicle pointed out, a glimpse of what the Niners' defense might look like without some of the players who are now gone came last season. Charvarius Ward, Javon Hargrave, Dre Greenlaw and Talanoa Hufanga combined to miss 44 games.
The results were, as shown above, not good. And that doesn't account for the departure of Leonard Floyd, who was second on the team with 8.5 sacks last season (while playing all 17 games, by the way).
It's fair to think if Saleh wanted to keep players on the defense he's taking back over, within some financial reason surely in play, they'd still be on the roster. It's worth wondering about his influence on the specific moves that have been made, if he has any.
But in the big picture, Branch reported Saleh isn't caught off-guard by the exodus of defensive players.:
"To be clear, Saleh isn’t blindsided by the mass exodus. Most of these moves were covered in his job interview in January.....Saleh was aware of the 49ers’ offseason financial recalibration that general manager John Lynch revealed to reporters last month. The release of Floyd and (Maliek) Collins were cost-cutting moves, but they were also made after both players were reasons for last year’s run-defense struggles."
Credit to Lynch for making it clear to Saleh what was coming as things were "recalibrated," financially, and some key defenders were lined up to be gone.
Saleh knew what he was getting into then, good, bad or possibly very ugly for his first year back running San Francisco's defense.
