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San Francisco 49ers defensive coordinator Robert Saleh owned up to his part in a post-game confrontation with Jacksonville Jaguars head coach Liam Coen on Sunday.
After the Jaguars defeated the 49ers on the road, 26-21, Saleh and Coen went viral as they needed to be held back after screaming at one another on the field. Coen was seen saying, “Keep my name out of your mouth.”
The altercation stemmed from Saleh using the phrase “legal sign stealing” during a news conference before their game. But he downplayed what happened in his first time speaking with reporters.
“It is all good,” he said, via ESPN. “Whatever happened on Sunday doesn’t change how I feel. In my heart, I genuinely was trying to give a compliment and I own the fact that I probably used the wrong choice of words, but however you want to word it, I mean, they’re really, really good at putting their players in position to be successful.”
Coen also downplayed the situation after the game, saying that it wasn’t “a big deal” and “we’ll keep that between us.”
Saleh continued to give praise to Coen, saying that he does a “hell of a job.”
“As coaches, we’re always chasing leverage,” he explained. “They’re trying to have winning leverage. We’re trying to take leverage away and everyone in the league is trying to find every avenue they can. As a coach watching their tape, I recognize the amount of hours that must be spent to be able to build formations and define every little indicator they can to give their players a chance to be in a successful position. That’s exhausting and every team does it. Some do it better than others and it was my way of acknowledging that these guys are really, really, really good at it. And like I said, Sunday doesn’t change that.”
Sign-stealing in the NFL is legal, as long as boundaries are not crossed. Teams are allowed to use TV tape and all-22 film to figure out signals on any side of the ball. Before games, while also having their own staff in the press box to try to break down signals in real-time.
Here’s what Saleh said on Thursday at the game at length.
“Liam and his staff, a couple of guys coming from Minnesota, they’ve got – legally – a really advanced signal-stealing-type system where they always find a way to put themselves in an advantageous situation,” he said. “They do a great job with 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. They’re almost elite in that regard, that whole entire tree of Sean [McVay] to Kevin O’Connell to all those guys. They all do it.”
The 49ers had their three-game win streak snapped on Sunday after falling to the Jaguars, who are also 3-1.
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