San Francisco 49ers CEO Jed York joined Matt Maiocco's CSN Bay Area podcast on Monday and shared the story of the first time he met new head coach Kyle Shanahan. During the story, York revealed that the 49ers actually wanted to bring in Shanahan in 2015 to be the offensive coordinator under Jim Tomsula. Of course, Shanahan decided to join the Atlanta Falcons in the same role and helped lead them to a Super Bowl appearance this past season.
"The first time that we met, Kyle had three or four interviews in two days," York shared. "Everything was kind of jam-packed. We were later at night and we're trying to fly different places. He's trying to meet with different people. Obviously, we had talked to his father the last two seasons and his father was a finalist for our job two seasons in a row. And Kyle was actually discussed potentially being Jimmy T's offensive coordinator and he decided to go somewhere else.
"So you didn't know quite how things were going to go sitting down with somebody in that situation and I said I was looking for a coach that was going to be here for a longer period of time. And I said, 'Honestly, if your dad said he wanted to bring you as his coordinator and that was kind of the succession plan, maybe things would have gone different. I don't know.' And we got into that conversation and when it sort of broke off where Brian [Hampton] and Paraag [Marathe] left and sort of left the two of us, I let him know, very, very clearly, that he was at the very top end of our list.
"And it was one of those situations where we kind of shook hands and it was one of those things -- do you bro hug here? Do you not bro hug? What do you do? And I wanted to play it cool so you didn't do the bro hug right then. But it was clear that we had a chemistry and a connection and that the 49ers mean something to Kyle. Some of his formative years, being with his dad when we won our last Super Bowl -- it means something to him.
And being able to follow in his dad's footsteps and be in a place where he has some roots and knows the history, knows the players, that really connected with me and, obviously, I think his coaching ability speaks for itself."
You can listen to the entire interview here.
