On Sunday, the 49ers fired their third head coach in three seasons.
Chip Kelly was dismissed after finishing 2-14 in his only season at the helm. A year prior, Jim Tomsula was also canned after one season, finishing 5-11. Before that it was Jim Harbaugh, who was fired after going 8-8 and taking the team to three NFC Championship Games in consecutive seasons.
The 49ers’ recent track record with head coaches is alarming, and Jason La Canfora of NFL Network believes it’s going to make the 49ers’ head coaching vacancy a tough sell for top candidates who have other options.
“It’s going to be a tough sell,” La Canfora said on KNBR Tuesday morning. “A lot of people in the coaching community are turned off by the way it’s gone down there. The way that the Harbaugh dismissal was handled, into these last two regimes.”
Just three seasons ago, CEO Jed York was looked at as one of the better young owners in football, turning a sorry 49ers franchise into a perennial Super Bowl contender. La Canfora says he, and many others, couldn’t have foreseen what would happen thereafter.
“Hasn’t gone the way I thought it would,” La Canfora said. “I thought they had found something in Harbaugh and they were getting a stadium built. You talked to people, old school 49ers, guys who had been around there who were really solid on the organization. Three, four years ago they felt like Jed was getting it, that he was coming into his own, and that the sleeping giant was finally awakened. Now each year they’ve found a way to hit new lows.”
“We’re talking about coaches and people having to rehabilitate their reputation, he’s gonna have to do the same thing,” La Canfora continued. “I don’t know that yesterday necessarily won him any converts in terms of media or public perception, but it’s going to be dictated in the standings.”
On the bright side?
“They’ve got nowhere to go but up.”