On Thursday, San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan announced that he was firing defensive coordinator, Steve Wilks.
“This morning I relieved Steve Wilks of his duties,” said Shanahan on a conference call with reporters. “It’s a really tough decision because really, it says nothing about Steve as a man or as a football coach. He’s exactly what we wanted as a man. And he’s a great football coach….It just ended up not being the right fit.”
Apparently, Wilks’ failure to block the Chiefs’ Chris Jones, kick an extra point, get Christian McCaffrey the ball in the second half and not duplicate the Super Bowl-winning defenses for Shanahan like former defensive coordinators Robert Saleh and DeMeco Ryans led to his downfall.
What’s that?
Wilks isn’t the offensive coordinator or special teams coach?
Saleh and Ryans didn’t win Super Bowls?
That’s strange because, from the sound of things, you would think Wilks coached every part of the game and that he failed to replicate the success of the previous defensive coordinators.
Wilks’ defense was good enough to make the Super Bowl and good enough to keep them in the game by limiting soon-to-be the GOAT, Patrick Mahomes, to 13 points through the third quarter, and only allowing the Chiefs to score six in the fourth before heading to overtime. That sounds really good to me.
But it still wasn’t good enough for 49ers defensive end Nick Bosa, who took a swipe at Wilks.
“The zone read got us a couple of times,” Bosa said. “We could have been more prepared there. We have to know in crucial situations who is going to have the ball, and obviously it’s him [Mahomes]”.
Yet if you watch the film and listen to Tomy Romo on the call, you would know that Wilks had Bosa prepared as Romo pointed out numerous times how Bosa refused to let Mahomes have the edge and generally contained him or forced him into bad throws while scrambling.
Aside from Bosa, some took aim at Wilks for the defense’s general performance during the season.
Yet when you compare Wilks’ stats to DeMeco Ryans’ stats, that point is moot as well.
Opponent PPG went down from 18.9 in two seasons under Ryans to 17.5 under Wilks.
Opponent YPG went down from 305.3 to 303.9 and takeaways increased from 1.5 to 1.7 per game, respectively.
Under Wilks, All-Pro linebacker Fred Warner made his third All-Pro team and had more interceptions (+3), forced fumbles (+3) and more tackles (+2) under Wilks than he did in 2022 under Ryans. In addition, second-year cornerback Charvarius Ward made the Pro Bowl.
This isn’t to discredit DeMeco Ryans but rather to refute claims that the defense wasn’t as good this past season as it was before Wilks’ arrival.
This is also to illustrate the absolute disrespect Steve Wilks has endured during his NFL coaching career.
