Candidates are flying in from across the country to interview
with 49ers president and CEO Jed York for the team’s general
manager position. But all roads appear to be leading to an eventual
winner: In-house candidate Trent Baalke.
SANTA CLARA
Candidates are flying in from across the country to interview with 49ers president and CEO Jed York for the team’s general manager position. But all roads appear to be leading to an eventual winner: In-house candidate Trent Baalke.
Michael Lombardi, the ex-Raiders executive, was the latest to join the chorus that Baalke will get the job. Lombardi had a phone interview with York on Tuesday night, according to a source with knowledge of the conversation. The next day on NFL Network, where Lombardi now works, he said that he wasn’t a true candidate.
“Look, the 49ers are going to hire Trent Baalke as the general manager,” Lombardi said Wednesday. “I think a lot of talk, a lot of speculation about other candidates is really just speculation and talk. I’m not a candidate there. I think Trent Baalke will be named the GM probably in 48 hours if I had my guess on the situation.”
Many signs point to Baalke, who has run the team’s personnel department since March, eventually winning the job. York has said he will interview candidates until Sunday and then decide whether the search will continue with personnel officials who are currently employed by other teams.
“We’re going to take our time and find the right candidate,” York said.
All of the candidates York has interviewed or plans to interview are not employed by NFL teams. The 49ers are prohibited from speaking with those candidates until the regular season is over.
York said he would interview Baalke, who is in Florida this week, when he returns to Santa Clara on Friday or Saturday.
During his Monday news conference, York said that his general manager hire will pick the team’s next head coach and that he was looking for someone with experience as a general manager.
Lombardi and ex-Rams executive Tony Softli already have interviewed with York. He also plans to talk to Ted Sundquist, Rick Mueller and Tom Donahoe, all of whom have either been general managers or run a team’s personnel department. Softli, who is African American, also satisfies the league’s “Rooney Rule” requirement that at least one minority interview must be conducted.
Lombardi, a Raiders executive from 1999 to 2007, writes a column for www.nfl.com. He was a scout for the 49ers during the team’s glory days in the mid 1980s and has written glowingly about how Bill Walsh ran the organization.
Those interviews coincided with what looks to be a campaign to bolster Baalke. Ex-49ers quarterback and current ESPN commentator Trent Dilfer was on KNBR (680 AM) this week and said Baalke was “one of the most talented people in this league.”
Word also leaked to national outlets that Baalke was in Miami this week to meet with the dean of personnel executives, Bill Parcells, who hired Baalke as a scout with the Jets in 1998.
York said he also planned to call Parcells, both to ask him about Baalke and to pick his brain about how to resurrect a fallen franchise.
— Story by Matthew Barrows, The Sacramento Bee
