Mike Silver seemed to lessen the chances Nick Sorensen returns to the 49ers staff.
The San Francisco 49ers will have a new defensive coordinator next season, after head coach Kyle Shanahan opted to move on from Nick Sorensen following the 6-11 season. Despite firing Sorensen, Shanahan left the door open to retaining him on the staff in a new role.
“Still trying to hope to keep him on board in another capacity because he’s a guy I don’t want to lose,” Shanahan told the media when announcing the move. “But just where we’re at, really, as a team, where I think we need to go, there’s a lot of big decisions ahead for us.”
Given those comments, there was reasonable expectations that Shanahan would make Sorensen the team’s special teams coordinator. Shanahan also fired special teams coordinator Brian Schneider. While Sorensen has only worked on the Niners defensive staff under Shanahan, he was an assistant special teams coach from 2013-15 with the Seattle Seahawks and was the Jacksonville Jaguars special teams coordinator in 2021.
However, Mike Silver of The Athletic seemed to pour water on those ideas earlier this week. Silver responded to a fan on Twitter who asked if the Niners were planning to hire Sorensen to lead the team’s special teams. Silver responded, “I do not expect the 49ers to hire Sorenen as their special teams coach.”
I do not expect the 49ers to hire Sorensen as their special teams coach https://t.co/2fUg1KTk09
— Michael Silver (@MikeSilver) January 20, 2025
Silver is primarily a columnist at this point in his career, but he remains well connected in league circles and covered the team throughout the last season for The San Francisco Chronicle. Given that history, it’s reasonable to believe that Silver’s opinion is based on more than just a personal hunch.