Green Bay Packers head coach Matt LaFleur has seen numerous of his previous assistant coaches leave for more prominent positions with other teams. Examples include his former quarterbacks coach, Luke Getsy, who spent a year as the Chicago Bears’ offensive coordinator and part of this season with the Las Vegas Raiders. He is currently a defensive analyst for the Packers, having been fired by Las Vegas earlier this year.
Getsy isn’t the only coach fired this year who LaFleur has brought on board midseason. Robert Saleh, the former New York Jets head coach, was sacked following a 2-3 start to the season. It wasn’t long before the Packers’ head coach, who was the best man at his wedding, contacted and offered him a position for the rest of the season. Since arriving in Green Bay, Saleh, a defensive-minded coach, has been working with the offense to help them prepare for various methods that opponents may use against them, much like Getsy is doing with the defense.
Green Bay Packers Coach Robert Saleh interviewed for the San Francisco 49ers’ Defensive Coordinator position. Nick Sorensen, the San Francisco 49ers’ defensive coordinator, was sacked earlier this week. No one was surprised to learn that Saleh was interviewed for the job: When Saleh was fired by the Jets earlier this season, it was widely assumed that he would be the top candidate on possible defensive coordinator lists for teams looking for one.
The 49ers make sense for Saleh because he was their defensive coordinator from 2017 to 2020 before leaving to become the Jets’ head coach. Many fans are aware of the long history between Saleh, LaFleur, and 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan. In the late 2000s, all three worked on the same coaching staff for the Houston Texans. Saleh was with the Texans for six seasons. He started as a defensive intern in 2005 and worked as a defensive quality control coach from 2006 to 2008. From 2009 to 2010, he was the Texans’ assistant linebackers coach.
LaFleur was an offensive assistant for the Texans from 2008 to 2009, his first coaching job in the NFL. Shanahan was Houston’s quarterbacks coach in 2007 and offensive coordinator from 2008 to 2009. When he went to assume the same post at Washington, he brought LaFleur along as his quarterbacks coach. When Shanahan was hired as head coach in San Francisco in 2017, he reached out to his old friend from Houston, Saleh, to serve as his defensive coordinator. Now that the former Jets coach is back on the market, it stands to reason that he would be interested in reuniting with an old friend.
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