Report: Mike Holmgren has ‘expressed interest’ in coaching 49ers

It’s been a miserable season for the San Francisco 49ers. The team is 4-11 doesn’t have a lot of talent, and head coach Jim Tomsula is either badly overwhelmed or his acting skills are Oscar-worthy.

Fortunately, according to Robert Klemko, there is some potential light at the end of the tunnel in the form of Super Bowl winning coach and former 49ers’ offensive coordinator, Mike Holmgren.

Further tweets on the matter from Klemko and Dave Softy Mahler from Seattle’s 950 KJR can be seen here and here, but the general gist is that Holmgren hasn’t been quiet about his desire to guide the franchise.

We aren’t kidding ourselves here, so let’s start with the negative. Mike Holmgren will be 68 in June and hasn’t coached since 2008. It’s very likely that his best days are in the past.

All of that is true. None of that means that this shouldn’t happen, though.

For the 49ers and their fans, the best thing about this isn’t what Holmgren did in San Francisco as a coordinator, or Green Bay/Seattle as a Head Coach. No, it’s that a coach with a resume who has seemingly no need to take this job is not only willing to coach the 49ers, but apparently is interested in doing so.

Last week, Tim Kawakami of the San Jose Mercury News came up with a list of coaching candidates for the 49ers in the event of Tomsula being removed. In doing so, he said something rather important and obvious that paints a bleak picture.

I’m a practical columnist: I’m going to start with some tremendous coaching candidates, but I also won’t skip over the prominent fact that no great candidate will want to A) work for Baalke, B) come to a situation known for back-stabbing successful coaches; C) join a team that is currently without a legitimate starting NFL quarterback or much else on the roster except safeties and injured players.

Given the way that the 49ers and Jim Harbaugh parted ways after the 2014 season and how 2015 has gone, that’s all hard to argue with. But if a coach with Holmgren’s resume is expressing any interest in the 49ers gig after this mess of a season, then there’s some hope that others might, too.

But Jed York and Trent Baalke can’t be picky and assume that others would want to come to the Bay Area. They know Holmgren is interested, and that’s what matters. If they fire Tomsula and pass on Holmgren, then York and Baalke would likely be looking for fairly lightly regarded coordinators, position coaches, and college coaches, hoping to get lucky.

The greater positive regarding a potential Holmgren hire is who he’d bring along. If Holmgren is a head coach in 2016, he’d be either the oldest or second oldest in the NFL, depending on whether or not the New York Giants bring Tom Coughlin back.

Logically speaking, it’s not likely that anyone involved, including Holmgren, would see this as anything more than a short-term fix, probably around 2-3 years.

Tomsula is not the only problem with the 49ers’ coaching staff. There’s no natural heir apparent. Sure, Eric Mangini or Tony Sparano could take the job on an interim basis, but that would likely mean Tomsula is fired in season, which would obviously mean another lost year. Neither has a resume to suggest that they’d be the coach to bring the team back to respectability.

But if Holmgren is brought in, he’d probably clean house and bring in his own assistants. Chances are that he’d think of 1-2 of those guys as potential replacements for when he’d step down, which would set San Francisco up for future seasons.

This goes beyond whether Holmgren’s best days as a coach are behind him or not. The worst thing about this season for the 49ers isn’t the 4-11 record, but that there is seemingly little to no hope for future seasons. If a coach like Holmgren is brought in, then he brings a little bit of hope with him.

Bottom line: If Mike Holmgren wants to coach the 49ers after this season, Jed York and Trent Baalke have to make it happen.