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.
It started in Arizona in 2018 when Wilks was hired as the head coach of a talent-deprived Cardinals team. Despite having rookie quarterback Josh Rosen, a 35-year-old Larry Fitzgerald and not much else on either side of the ball, management felt one season was enough so they fired Wilks after going 3-13.
The next season the team welcomed Kliff Kingsbury, provided him with weapons such as Kyler Murray and DeAndre Hopkins and still went 28-37-1 with one winning season and one playoff appearance in four seasons under Kingsbury.
Wilks then bounced to the Cleveland Browns and the University of Missouri before returning to the NFL in 2022 as the defensive coordinator of the Carolina Panthers.
After starting 1-4 that season under the disastrous tenure of Matt Rhule, Rhule was fired and Wilks was given the interim head coaching position. That season, the Panthers finished 6-6 (7-10 overall) under Wilks and almost won the NFC South and a playoff birth.
Yet despite his success, Wilks was passed over in favor of Frank Reich, who was fired by the Colts after starting 3-5-1 the previous season.
This past season, the Panthers went 1-10 under Reich before he was finally fired.
All of this is to say that the continued disrespect of Steve Wilks is infuriating.
Some want to call out Wilks for the 49ers defensive performance during the team’s three-game losing streak in October. But that’s also when Trent Williams and Deebo Samuel were injured and Brock Purdy threw five interceptions during that time.
Yet the defense was still better overall this season in many ways compared to previous seasons and the 49ers made it to the Super Bowl.
Steve Wilks has never been given a true opportunity to build a team, never been given serious consideration despite his proven success, or has become a scapegoat for other’s miscues and poor decisions.
Wilks is owed an apology by many, especially those whose teams failed to improve after parting ways with him.
While we doubt that will happen, it’s important to highlight the way Wilks has been treated as it keeps happening, and mostly happening to Black coaches, which is one of the reasons why Wilks joined Brian Flores’ racial discrimination lawsuit.
If the 49ers don’t make the Super Bowl next season and the defense falters, everyone should point the finger directly at Kyle Shanahan for making the foolish decision made by the Cardinals and Panthers’ owner David Tepper.
And we’ll be sure to remind all of the Wilks haters about that, too.
