San Francisco 49ers Head Coach: Chip Kelly Or Mike Shanahan To Be Next 49ers Coach [Breaking News]

San Francisco 49ers head coach rumors may be at an end. The new 49ers head coach will be either Chip Kelly or Mike Shanahan, with a final decision expected within the next 24 hours. NFL analyst Adam Schefter just reported that league sources are telling him the 49ers front office will decide between Kelly and Shanahan very soon. That announcement is “likely” to come very soon.

As reported by NFL.com at the beginning of January, the San Francisco 49ers fired former head coach Jim Tomsula following his one and only season with the team. The 49ers finished the regular season with a 5-11 record, missing the NFL Playoffs for a second-straight season in the process. Getting swept by the division-rival Seattle Seahawks for a second-straight year didn’t help matters, either.

The fresh San Francisco 49ers rumors indicate that team owner, Jed York, is ready to make a big splash to follow up the Tomsula firing. By hiring either Chip Kelly or Mike Shanahan to close out this week, York will certainly be taking his 49ers in a new direction. Both coaches come with a lot of baggage, but could also end up with a lot of power should they take on this new job.

Mike Shanahan has a combined record of 170-138 as a head coach in the NFL. His most recent stop was with the Washington Redskins, where the team was 24-40 during his time there. The Redskins lost at least 10 games in three of those seasons, falling to just 3-13 in the 2013 NFL season. Shanahan found more success with the Denver Broncos before that, helping lead the team to two Super Bowl titles with quarterback John Elway at the helm.

Chip Kelly gained his fame as coach of the Oregon Ducks. After a run of success at Oregon, he was hired by the Philadelphia Eagles to take the team to the next level. Kelly was the coach of the Eagles for three seasons, taking the team to the NFL Playoffs in 2013. The team finished with a combined record of 26-21 in those three seasons, but slipped to 6-9 before he got fired during the 2015 NFL season. Kelly has been linked to a number of teams during this offseason, but the San Francisco 49ers rumors have been the most tangible.

The 49ers have the fifth pick in the 2016 NFL Draft, showing that the team is going to soon have another elite college football player on the roster. That will be a good asset for either Chip Kelly or Mike Shanahan to work with, so the task for Jed York is to figure out which coach would be best to rebuild the franchise. The team has struggled since getting eliminated in the 2013 NFL Playoffs, and has a lot of money still owed to quarterback Colin Kaepernick. The new coach will have to decide whether Kaepernick is the answer at quarterback, or of the franchise needs to look in the 2016 NFL Draft for a new one.

There is a lot of work that needs to be done with the roster in Santa Clara, especially after a series of retirements following the 2014 NFL season. Building the team up through the draft and free agency is made easier by how much room under the salary cap that the franchise has for 2016. This could make the team a real player in free agency, but could also help in acquiring a player or two through trades. While there are a lot of question marks regarding the team still, most of the San Francisco 49ers rumors from this offseason give the team a shot to rebound quickly.

[Photo by Brian Bahr/Getty Images]