49ers DC Robert Saleh is one of five early candidates for the Cardinals to be their next head coach.<\/p>\n
Candidates have begun to emerge as targets for the Arizona Cardinals<\/a> for their head coaching vacancy. They fired Jonathan Gannon after going 3-14 in 2025 and 15-36 in three seasons.<\/p>\n The Cardinals are looking within the division. According to SI.com’s Albert Breer<\/a>, they have put in a request to interview San Francisco 49ers defensive coordinator Robert Saleh.<\/p>\n Saleh returned as the DC for the Niners in 2025. He was their DC from 2017-2020 before he was hired as head coach of the New York Jets, where he went 20-36 in three-plus seasons. He was fired after five games in 2024.<\/p>\n The Cardinals can’t interview Saleh this week, as the 49ers play in the first round of the playoffs, but they can interview him next week if he is willing.<\/p>\n Over the last nine seasons as a DC and head coach, he has led top-five defenses five times. He is known as a strong leader. He has head coaching experience, although he did not have success in wins and losses.<\/p>\n Who else are candidates?<\/p>\n Along with Saleh, the Cardinals are reportedly currently targeting four others:<\/p>\n Denver Broncos DC Vance JosephSeattle Seahawks OC Klint KubiakMiami Dolphins DC Anthony WeaverNew England Patriots tight ends coach and passing game coordinator Thomas Brown<\/p>\n Get more Cardinals<\/a> and NFL coverage from Cards<\/a> Wire’s Jess Root and others by listening to the latest on the Rise Up, See Red podcast. Subscribe on Spotify<\/a>,\u00a0YouTube<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0Apple podcasts<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"49ers DC Robert Saleh is one of five early candidates for the Cardinals to be their next head…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":660026,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2078],"tags":[247,265,375,390,2604,1327,5570,7,20842,2344,1184,246,88,6,35196,245,264,5358,6043,7218,1602,2517,1982,9,5573,2348,266,1980,5571,776],"class_list":["post-660025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arizona-cardinals","tag-american","tag-american-football","tag-arizona","tag-arizona-cardinals","tag-arizonacardinals","tag-cardinals","tag-coaching","tag-football","tag-hub","tag-illustrated","tag-listicle","tag-neutral","tag-news","tag-nfl","tag-nfl-hub","tag-overall","tag-overall-neutral","tag-robert","tag-robert-saleh","tag-saleh","tag-smg","tag-smg-listicle","tag-smg-timely","tag-sports","tag-sports-coaching-u0026-training","tag-sports-illustrated","tag-sports-news","tag-timely","tag-training","tag-u0026"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115851574840291130","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=660025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660025\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/660026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=660025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=660025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=660025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}