hawknation2015":2xxoprkl said:
Now it’s just about money. Tomsula came cheap. They promoted two yes-men to the coordinator positions (Mangenius — LOLOL). They had enough cap room to sign Evan Mathis, but NO. They decided to trade for a Patriots reject in Jordan Devey instead.
BASG isn't a reporter, but he tends to be pretty good (you should be careful though, because he also tends to write about how idiotic Grant Cohn and Tim Kawakami are).
In any case though, I tend to give him the benefit of the doubt, but disagree with him on these points.
It's pretty well known that they intended to go with Gase, and then backed out at the very last second because he wanted to retain Fangio as the d-coordinator (the 9ers wanted a clean break) or to get Vance Joseph (the Bengals wouldn't let him interview). Things devolved from there and and Gase and Fangio ended up as the two coordinators in Chicago.
As for the two coordinators, that was ultimately a ripple effect of the Gase thing, as one of the major problems with the Tomsula hiring (as both Marvin and I have already explained) is he doesn't have a network of coaches to draw from. After drifting around in the wind the 9ers were forced to promote internally, and try to round out the coaching staff with a bunch of guys with previous HC and coordinator experience.
As for the Mathis thing, like the rest of the league, they were just never going to give a 34 year old guard big money. It's why he sat around forever.
The 9ers are clearly in shambles right now, but that it's about money is a really shallow analysis, IMO. (it's about having a HC who couldn't attract coordinator talent, a whole slew of pro-bowlers being lost to injury/retirement and arrest, and the natural progression of dealing with the salary cap and having their depth sucked away through overpriced FA contracts over the last few years)