As the undefeated San Francisco 49ers prepare to host the 2-1 Jacksonville Jaguars, 49ers defensive coordinator Robert Saleh was asked Thursday what the biggest challenge would be, specific to the Jaguars.
“Jacksonville is a very young but a very talented group,” Saleh said. “(Jaguars head coach) Liam (Coen) and his staff, a couple of guys coming from Minnesota, they’ve got a — legally — really advanced signal-stealing type of system, where they always find a way to put themselves in an advantageous situation. They do a great job of it. They formation you, they just try to find any nugget they can.
“So, we’ve got to be great with our signals and we’ve got to be great with our communication to combat some of the tells that we might give on the field,” Saleh continued. “They’re almost elite in that regard, that whole entire (coaching) tree, from Sean (McVay) to Kevin O’Connell to all of those guys. They all do it. So, there’s challenges. They’re going to catch us in some situations where they have the advantage and we’ve just got to play good, sound fundamental football and do our best to out-execute them.”
Coen was asked about Saleh’s comments on Friday.
“I’m not going to speak on that fully right now,” Coen said. “(We) have a huge game for us coming up this weekend. We’ve got a great defense that we’ve got to go and attack, and that’s where our whole mindset and mentality is right now.”
Coen was pressed further, with a reporter asking if figuring out “whatever tell your opponent has” is part of a coach’s job.
“We have kind of typically, by formation, by game plan, by working really hard as a coaching staff throughout the week, trying to get indicators by your formation, motions, shifts, pre-snap,” Coen said. “Those are the things you’re trying to do as a coach if you’re trying to put your players in the best position to be successful, whether it’s attacking man or zone coverage with your formations, motions and concepts. It’s a lot of hard work that goes into game planning and trying to put your players in the best position to be successful.”
Thursday, when Saleh was asked to clarify the “signal-stealing,” he reiterated that there was nothing illegal about what Coen and the other coaches were doing.
“That’s the ultimate trick,” Saleh said. “Whether it’s people from the sideline, or whether it’s our individual hand signals. Whatever nugget they can find, they catch it, and they always happen to find themselves in good situations, based on the coverage you showed. There’s nothing illegal about it. I’m not suggesting that. It’s just, you can tell that they’ve got a canned system that’s getting them into a very advantageous position multiple times during the course of a game.”
Saleh said that he dealt with it last year as head coach of the New York Jets when his team played against O’Connell’s Vikings. The Jets lost 23-17.
“You can see it on tape when they’re studying, it’s like, ‘Damn, how’d they know to be in that call at that time?” Saleh said. “We’ve experienced it with the Rams a little bit. It’s not an uncommon thing. It’s just this group of people, they’re pretty damn good at it.”
McVay became the head coach of the Los Angeles Rams in 2017. Coen spent four seasons with the Rams (2018-2020, then returned in 2022) as an assistant. O’Connell spent two seasons as McVay’s offensive coordinator with the Rams in 2020 and ’21 before he was hired as the Minnesota Vikings’ head coach.
The easiest connection to make from Saleh’s reference to Minnesota is Jacksonville offensive coordinator Grant Udinksi, a Vikings assistant the past three years before joining Coen’s staff this offseason. Jaguars passing game coordinator Shane Waldron also spent four years on McVay’s staff in Los Angeles (2017-2020), while Jaguars offensive line coach Shaun Sarrett was the assistant offensive line coach in Minnesota last year under O’Connell.
Stealing signals was famously in the public spotlight in 2007, when the NFL penalized the New England Patriots for the Spygate scandal. Coach Bill Belichick was fined $500,000, the maximum amount permitted under league rules, while the Patriots were fined $250,000 and were forced to forfeit their first-round pick in the 2008 NFL Draft.
Then-Jets head coach Eric Mangini, who had spent the previous nine years under Belichick in New England, notified the league that the Patriots were illegally stealing signs from the opposition.
(Photos of Robert Saleh, left, and Liam Cohen: Kavin Mistry and Sean Gardner / Getty Images)
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