REPORT: 49ers Prepared to Make Robert Saleh the NFL’s Highest-Paid DC

It’s Friday, January 17, 2025, and the 49ers still haven’t hired a defensive coordinator to replace Nick Sorensen.

And that’s because the 49ers seem to be waiting for one candidate — former New York Jets head coach Robert Saleh. He was the 49ers’ defensive coordinator from 2017 to 2020 and is their preferred choice to fill the position this year according to The Athletic’s Matt Barrows.

“It’s Robert Saleh or bust, really,” Barrows said recently. “Because they haven’t done much work with anybody else to this point. I’ve heard that they already told Saleh, ‘We will make you the highest-paid defensive coordinator in all the land if you sign with us.’ So now it’s just a matter of waiting for Saleh.”

This is a risky game for the 49ers to play.

They’re banking that Robert Saleh won’t get hired as a head coach this offseason. But he currently has drawn interest from three teams that have head-coaching vacancies — the Jaguars, the Raiders and the Cowboys. Saleh most likely will wait for those teams to make their decisions before he gets back to the 49ers with a decision of his own. So this process could take a while.