New England Patriots offensive coordinator remains one of the favorites to land the head coaching job with the San Francisco 49ers. The other top candidate is Atlanta Falcons offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan. Many believe that the reason behind the 49ers' patience in hiring a head coach is because these two coordinators are still involved in playoff action.
How interested is McDaniels in the 49ers job? Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk is reporting that McDaniels has been reaching out to potential assistant coaches around the league and urging them to remain available. After all, the 49ers are the only remaining team with a head coach vacancy and the five others that started the offseason have filled their roles and started building coaching staffs.
However, McDaniels may be somewhat conflicted about the 49ers job. After all, the team has fired three head coaches in as many years so there is some question whether a new head coach would be given a long enough leash to accomplish a large rebuild or if CEO Jed York might give in to fan pressure once again should the team stumble early.
"He has four young children, and there's a strong desire to not uproot the family for a short-term stint on the other side of the country," writes Florio. "As the Broncos coach in 2009 and most of 2010, McDaniels didn't even two full seasons to turn around the Broncos. Given San Francisco's recent trend of parting ways with coaches, there's legitimate concern that McDaniels possibly won't be coaching for an extended period of time."
Both the Patriots and the Falcons are headed to their respective conference's championship games, so the 49ers will have to wait at least another week if either McDaniels or Shanahan are their target. They have appeared to be patient during their coaching search, so perhaps York has learned that he needs to be patient with his next head coach.
Meanwhile, the Green Bay Packers won their Divisional matchup against the Dallas Cowboys. That means the 49ers will have to wait on Packers executives Eliot Wolf or Brian Gutekunst for their general manager position as well.
