Report: 49ers make Mike Vrabel an offer

Breaking news from ESPN’s Dianna Marie Russini:

Two questions:

1. Do you think Vrabel will accept the 49ers’ offer?
2. Would Vrabel be an upgrade over Eric Mangini as a defensive coordinator?

This article has 100 Comments

  1. Not going to see an ROI until his second season as the defense will be starting over. Injuries, trouble with the law, unexpected retirements, free agent misses (see Dockett) really hindered the talent Mangini had to deal with. Long term though Vrabel comes from a good background and watching him in how he handled the LB corps in Houston is promising.

  2. There’s no way to tell whether or not he’ll be an upgrade over Mangini being that he has never held the position of DC before. I do like that he is an up and comer and has done good things with the linebacking corps in Houston.

  3. It appears the 49ers are building a formidable coaching staff.

    Also, the 49ers have talked with Hardy Nickerson (LB’s).

    Razoreater

    January 20, 2016 at 1:40 pm

    He’s pushing in all his Chips on Gabbert it marks the end of the Kaepernick era?…

    Prime Time

    January 20, 2016 at 1:44 pm

    Don’t tell Seb, he might take a plunge!

    I spotted the police escorting a man fitting the Sebster’s description marching off the Golden gate Bridge.

  4. You don’t make an offer just to have him turn it down. I’m sure they have an idea of his answer, plus you don’t turn down an opportunity you just interviewed for. He’s an instant upgrade as far as relating to the players and intangibles. I like the idea of the defense taking on his personality, and he can’t do much worse than Mangini….

    1. I can’t wait to see what he can do for Lynch, Armstead, and Harold.

  5. I think he’ll accept the job and be an upgrade over Mangini. Mangini’s game called for confusing schemes which at times confused the defense more than anything, but Vrabel will bring back the hard-hitting defense that was the backbone of the team from 2011-2014. This is a great hiring.

  6. Being a first time DC, his position coaches will be very important. He will need a solid, experienced staff to bounce ideas and lean on.

    1. We had great expectations
      We had a lavender sea
      We had cause and the potions
      Prince of the city, king of the keys

      The devil’s in the detail
      Your secret’s safe with me
      The devil’s in the detail
      And we’re all out to sea
      The devil’s in the detail
      We’re at the watershed
      The devil’s in the detail
      Sleeping in my bed
      The devil’s in the detail
      Weaved within the cloth
      The devil’s in the detail
      He’s out collecting moths

      The gates of Babylon opened
      We fell upon our prey
      Everything was taken
      It was the summer of our day
      Come here my skanky toady
      Let me whisper in your ear
      If you think you’re fooling anyone
      Baby it’s not very clear

      The devil’s in the detail
      Your secret’s safe with me
      The devil’s in the detail
      And we’re all out to sea
      The devil’s in the detail
      Underneath the stone
      The devil’s in the detail
      Chewing on the bone
      The devil’s in the detail
      We’re at the watershed
      The devil’s in the detail
      She’s sleeping in my bed

      The devil’s in the detail
      We’re at the watershed
      The devil’s in the detail
      Now she’s sleeping in my bed
      The devil’s in the detail
      Underneath the stone
      The devil’s in the detail
      It’s chewing on the bone

  7. I like this. What this does is give the defense its own symbol of determination and passion. They will probably want to run through a wall for Vrabel. Not so much for Professor Kelly, IMO. I hope he accepts. The first year is going to be transitional anyway. Roll the dice.

  8. At this point I would be happy with different. Better? Maybe not, the talent level is very low on this team.

  9. Of course he will take the job. Unless his wife really, really likes Texas or he really, really likes being a linebacker coach.

  10. Bold move, for a passionate football junkie. He has the right attitude and is known to have been one of the smartest and hard working players on a great Patriots D. Can’t say whether it will work out, but I like the hire if he joins. Which I suspect he will.

  11. What’s clear… Kelly and Vrabel are gamble picks. Jed wasn’t kidding when he said “swinging for the fences.” They will do great, or flop.

    Will “swinging for the fences” be a draft theme too? Even in a roster with holes, 12 picks + a few FAs is alot to squeeze into a 53. Trade ups from 7 are absurdly expensive, unlikely, but not out of the question. Trade ups from pick 37 could pay off.

  12. Let’s be honest, there isn’t much to live up to here with what happened last season. I’d prefer to keep Mangini for continuity, but I also understand Kelly looking at Mangini’s history and saying “meh.” Maybe it is a struggle the first year, but then again I don’t think anyone expects this team to do much next year anyway.

    1. They don’t want to keep Mangini for just the reason you prefer. Continuity of removing the losing mentality along with the rest….

    2. rocket,
      The new regime has a storied 49er history to live up to.
      Tomsula was a glitch and will be forgotten in the annals of 49ers lore.

      I’m sure that Kelly and company will be given at least a one – two year honeymoon period.
      But there should be a noted improvement by the end of the 2016 season and a vast improvement by year 2017.

  13. I think the only reasons for rejecting the job would be compensation considering Texas has no State income taxes and the housing cost here OR he gets a better offer from another team; ie better defense to coach, more money, more authority.
    I would assume it is a big bump in pay to go from a position coach to DC and I don’t think Jed is going to get cheap now since the poor decisions last year has cost Millions.

      1. Razor you know there are many reasons why people interview for jobs they don’t intend to take. It’s up to the interviewer to determine if a candidate will accept a serious offer.

        In the past the 49ers have messed with candidates in order to be seen as conducting a serious search when in fact they intended to hire JimmyT all along. Take the use of JimmyT symbolically. I don’t think they will hire him as DC. ;-}

            1. Yea, I don’t see how that didn’t come up during the interview process and the week long planner that came before the presser….

              1. Do you think it’s possible that Baalke made a continuity pitch for Mangini and then let Kelly know that he would keep Mangini around until Kelly made his final choice?

                That would, to me, leave the ball in Kelly’s court but with a powerful suggestion from Kelly’s boss. I would expect that Tomsula, in a similar situation, would take his boss’s suggestion to heart. I think Kelly may have found an alternative.

                If Vrabel turns down the offer, that might open a whole new can of worms going into our hopeful future.

              2. That possibility is so minimal in my mind due to Kelly pointing out where the defense ranked and the argument against that kind of continuity….

              3. Learning a complex defensive system kind of continuity, not a defensive performance kind of continuity is what I think Baalke might have offered to Kelly.

                I don’t know beans about defensive football strategy, but I would have rejected that offer on the grounds that a good DC should start with what his talent can do well, and build toward a more complex goal. Instead Mangini seems to have started with complexity and then backed off when better teams clobbered his defense.

                I’ve never played Madden so what do I know. :-}

            2. Why do people believe Mangini is the guy Baalke wants? Remember last off season? He only got the job because he was the only one that didn’t turn them down.

              1. I guess people have short term memory loss. Almost everyone of Tomsulas’ hires was a castoff no one else wanted….

              2. My reason for thinking of Baalke was that Mangini was brought in just as the anti Harbaugh campaign slowly started after the Superbowl loss. Mangini came with a very vague job description about doing something from the offensive side. I doubt that Jed are Harbaugh felt they had to have Mangini on the staff. I don’t think Paraag felt that way either.

              3. If you’re saying Mangini is a weasel like Tomsula, and works undercover for Baalke, it still doesn’t make sense because Baalke is on his last rodeo and any Tomfoolery will no longer be tolerated….

              4. No I’m not saying that Razor. I’m not even saying that Kelly doesn’t like Mangini because of Spygate.

                All I’m saying is, for what ever reason, Baalke liked Mangini enough to create a job for him before the 2013 season, and would like to keep him here now. I’m also saying that Baalke may have made suggestions to his coach that a less secure coach might have followed. It should all be clear when Vrabel accepts the offer or we find out that the offer was never made and Mangini was always Kelly’s first choice.

              5. Yea, it’s getting rather convoluted with respect to the speculation. Let’s just wait and see what happens and go from there….

              6. Scooter for me it started with the odd beginning. Why would they hire Mangini to be the TE coach. It reeked of a team that wanted to get him on the staff but weren’t ready to put him in the position that they ultimately saw him in. He was almost literally hidden from view his first year on the team, like they wanted you to forget he was even there. There’s always been speculation that Baalke listens heavily to Parcels and Eric is a Parcel guy as well.

                The situation as a whole left me with an impression that they(Baalke/Jed) wanted Mangini on the team for after the Harbaugh situation cleared out and were willing to hire and stash him in a odd position until that happened. It’s the seeming effort to get him on the team that has made me feel that there was a strong desire for him to be a major role in the franchise.

              7. If they’re really trying this hard to replace Mangini at DC then surely all my thoughts on his position within the organization go right out the window. It still begs the question, what happens if they are forced to leave him in the position for the season. He’s going to have zero authority, every player in that locker will know that they tried, really hard to get rid of him so why should they listen to him. He’d be worse then a lame duck coach.

                This would make more sense to me if after hiring a new DC they reassign him to some type of ‘defensive’ assistant position.

      2. It’s not good policy to turn down job interviews. Even if you feel you aren’t ready, it’s always good to at least take the interview and go through the process.

  14. 1. Yes

    2. No. I don’t think the defensive struggles had anything to do with the coordinator.

  15. I’m also surprised that they didn’t just let Mangini go yesterday with the other assistants. I mean the entire world knows that they just job offered Vrabel if he does say no how can they expect that either Mangini would want to stick around or if he did how can they expect players to play for him knowing they tried to replace him?

    1. If the GM wants Mangini all he has to do is embed a “poison pill” in the offer to Vrabel. We watched that tactic take place last year if you recall.

      1. I’d say if the GM wants to be the GM after this year, he’d better sail in the same direction as the HC until there’s a discrepancy worth losing his job over. Picking his own staff wouldn’t be one of them….

        1. True, but when did the owner and GM consistently make the best choices for the team or you could even ask, for themselves? We could start with Dr. John and the people he hired.

    2. Mangini won’t get a better job than the one he has. If they lose out on Vrabel, Mangini probably will suck it up and keep trying to rebuild his reputation.

      1. Yep, not much else he can do seeing as though he’s under contract and there aren’t a whole lot of jobs left out there.

  16. I am curious why we weren’t given a link to the press conference yet. Usually that is up within an hour. Is it because the responses do not fit the agenda?

    1. Eric Rogers didn’t work for the Cowboys, Colts, Giants, or Patriots. All teams who needed receivers. I can’t say I approve of losing $225000 in cap space for a glorified practice squad player.

        1. They wound up paying Hayne $150,000 for sitting on the PS all year. This guy will get $75,000 more if he is on the roster. This really isn’t a big signing and surely not one that will affect what they do in FA or the draft.

          1. Do you have a transcript of the explanation by Jimmy Tom as to WHY Hayne was on the PS? Maybe you can provide the one where he details the reasons why Devey wasn’t….

            1. Two choices. Seb wanted it that way and lied to us, or Baalke wanted it that way and said nothing to us.

          2. Yeah, it’s a pittance in the overall scheme of things. If he works out then he’s cheap as chips, if he doesn’t, no big loss.

      1. ? He is a former Cowboy and had workouts with the Colts, Giants, and Patriots (If you google news his names each of those teams have reports about him working out for them. And this from Adam Shefter:
        “‏@AdamSchefter
        Before picking SF, former Calgary WR Eric Rogers visited 16 teams, had 13 offers. He caught 87 passes for 1,448 yards and 10 TDs last year.”

      2. Also Matt – I will do some Math for you: $225,000 of our reported $50M of available cap space is 0.45% (Yes – that is less than half of 1% of available cap space).

        1. I was being sarcastic referencing the Hayne situation when I said $225000 for a practice squad player. A practice squad player makes 6,600 a week for 17 weeks. All they did was pay him double what a normal practice squad player makes. Very cheap, which is where the problem lies.
          I don’t like the signing in the sense that the team is continuing to go cheap instead of spending money to bring in established NFL talent. He was on the Giants squad as an undrafted free agent in 2013 and was cut. In 2013, the Giants were WR depleted. That concerns me.

  17. Guess bye bye to boldin…….will miss his toughness on the field

    6-foot-3, 210-pound Eric Rogers who led the Canadian Football League with 1,448 receiving yards and 10 touchdowns last year, drew a lot of interest from the NFL.

    now heading to San Francisco.

    1. Goffs’ ability to process information is not as good as Teddy Bridgewater when he was drafted, who has similar arm strength, in my opinion….

      1. Vrabel was very impressive on this year’s Hard Knocks on HBO. He really jumped out at me. He taught, he pushed, he inspired, he listened. He may not be ready right now, but, at a minimum, he’s got a lot of potential. I think he’s worth the risk.

        1. Vrabel and Azzinaro -intense bootcamp for the niners D. Hopefully Vrabel (if he accepts the job) makes the leap to coordinator smoothly.

      2. Me. And anyone who thinks a potential DC should have more than two years experience as a position coach.

        Everyone here in Houston loves Vraibel. We are all VERY glad he turned the job down. Better here than there.

        But you are grasping at straws if you think two years as a linebacker coach qualifies you to take over an entire defense.

        No one HERE thinks that. Soon maybe, but not now.

        But you can, and will, think what you want.

    1. Somehow, I will take Belichick’s opinion over yours. Belichick gave a glowing recommendation.

    1. For a QB that’s never been healthy enough to complete two full seasons without missing a game it’s an absurd request. That’s not even in the park of opening the conversation. That’s like applying to McDonalds as a burger flipper and telling them you wont take the job for anything less the $50/hr.

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