49ers fire defensive coordinator Steve Wilks in aftermath of Super Bowl LVIII loss
Defensive coordinator Steve Wilks was fired Wednesday as 49ers defensive coordinator. Kyle Shanahan looking for a replacement.
SANTA CLARA – Coach Kyle Shanahan is moving on to his fourth defensive coordinator in five years, announcing Wednesday that he has fired Steve Wilks after one season.
Wilks was hired a year ago to replace DeMeco Ryans, who left to become the Houston Texans’ coach after two seasons as the defensive coordinator. Ryans replaced Robert Saleh, who was Shanahan’s initial defensive coordinator and just finished his third season as the New York Jets’ coach.
“Once I realized a different direction was best, it’s what I had to do,” Shanahan said on a media conference call an hour after relieving Wilks of his role.
Shanahan said the team will consider both internal and external candidates, noting that all remaining defensive assistants will “have a chance,” and among them are Kris Kocurek (defensive line), Daniel Bullocks (secondary), Johnny Holland (linebackers) and Nick Sorensen (pass-game specialist).
Wilks came aboard after going 6-6 as the Carolina Panthers’ interim coach, following his promotion from defensive pass-game specialist. His 49ers’ tenure seemed in jeopardy by midseason, when Shanahan had him move from the coaches’ booth to the sideline after a three-game losing streak.
Wilks’ firing comes three days after Super Bowl LVIII, where the 49ers allowed a game-winning touchdown drive in overtime of their 25-22 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs.
Last week before the Super Bowl, Wilks highlighted his team’s strong performance in the second halves of games, enabling the 49ers to make comebacks against the Packers and Lions.
“Anybody can sit down on Monday on the Internet and make those changes,” Wilks said last Thursday. “The great ones do it throughout the course of the game and we’ve been able to do that this season.”
Those comments came before the 49ers’ defense allowed 16 second-half points to the Chiefs and Patrick Mahomes, a frequent comeback artist, in the Super Bowl before that overtime touchdown.
“It says nothing about Steve as a man or a football coach. He’s exactly what we wanted as a man, and he’s a great football coach,” Shanahan said. “But just where we’re going and where we’re at with our team from a scheme standpoint, and looking throught the year to the last few years, this is a decision that was best for our organization.
Shanahan did not give Wilks a glowing endorsement in Tuesday’s year-end press conference but said he still needed to talk to him. That conversation went down Wednesday morning.
“He’s done a great job with that back end (the secondary),” defensive end Nick Bosa said Tuesday, before adding: “Obviously we had some issues this year throughout the year but that’s part of a full NFL season. We were playing our best ball at the end of the end.”
Wilks stepped into a 49ers defense that had been successful under Saleh and Ryans and admitted it was a bit bumpy at the beginning of the season but, like Bosa, felt that they had settled into a much better place over the end of the season.
“You’ve got to be confident and in the same token you’ve got to be humble,” Wilks said last week of the challenge of stepping into the role. “Humble to relinquish what you know and what you’ve been accustomed to doing and saying, ‘I’m open to learn what you guys are doing,’ and not to be able to bring in anybody into a staff and build trust amongst those guys, which we did.”
That turnaround led Wilks to interview for two head coaching jobs earlier in this hiring cycle, with the Chargers and Falcons. They have both since filled the position, hiring Jim Harbaugh and Raheem Morris, respectively.
Wilks 54, joined the NFL coaching ranks in 2005. Since his one-and-done season as the Arizona Cardinals coach in 2018, Wilks worked as defensive coordinator of the Cleveland Browns (2019) and the University of Missouri (2021), then served as the 2022 Panthers’ pass-game specialist before going 6-6 as their interim coach.
Former NFL head coaches with defensive backgrounds who could be appealing candidates include Mike Vrabel (Tennessee Titans) and Brandon Staley (Los Angeles Chargers). Bill Belichick (Patriots) and Pete Carroll (Seattle Seahawks) meet those criteria, too, but may be less likely candidates after extended runs as head coaches.
This offseason’s staff shakeups include these assistants leaving for posts elsewhere, according to Shanahan: pass-game coordinator Klint Kubiak (now New Orleans Saints’ offensive coordinator), defensive line assistant Darryl Tapp (now Washington Commanders’ defensive line coach), offensive line assistant James Cregg (now Las Vegas Raiders’ offensive line coach), and running backs assistant/associate head coach Anthony Lynn (now Commanders run-game coordinator).
On Wilks’ hiring a year ago, Shanahan said; “We committed not just the system but the players who’d been in our system – the D-line, the linebackers. They’d played in the system a long time. It was my goal not to have to change all of them. Bringing in Steve, who was unbelievable and loyal in trying to do it, but it just ended up being not the right fit.”