With Charlotte 49ers football job open again, 7 predictions about Wilks, Poggi and more
For the third time in the past six years, the Charlotte 49ers just fired their football coach.
This time it was Biff Poggi, who didn’t get to complete two full seasons before athletic director Mike Hill fired him Monday.
Now Hill is on the hunt again for the coach who can turn around a program that seems to forever be spinning its wheels. The 49ers AD got to Charlotte in 2018 and he’s now about to hire his third football coach (Will Healy, followed by Poggi, followed by whomever is next).
To put that in perspective, Panthers owner Dave Tepper also got here in 2018 and he just hired his third full-time football head coach prior to this season (following Matt Rhule and Frank Reich with current coach Dave Canales).
When you’re hiring and firing head coaches at nearly the same rate as Tepper — that’s not ideal.
But that’s where the 49ers find themselves, as they try to fix a program that has had only a single winning season in its 12 years since the school re-established football in 2013.
Hill likes to point out that Charlotte is still a very young program.
“It’s like a 12-year-old boy saying ‘I want to be a 25-year-old man,’” Hill said Tuesday. But the AD also knows that the “but-we’re-a-young-program” card has been played so many times over the past dozen years that some fans are sick of it. It’s past time for Charlotte to win more games. This year’s team is 3-7 and has lost four games by more than 30 points. Poggi coached 22 games at Charlotte and ended up 6-16.
“In the end, it’s a results-oriented business,” Hill said.
The 49ers will owe Poggi a $1.31-million buyout.
Here are seven predictions about where the program goes next, based on my observation and reporting:
1. The new coach won’t be Steve Wilks.
The Charlotte native and former Panthers interim head coach really should have gotten the Panthers job instead once upon a time. But that didn’t happen, and Wilks has been helping some on a volunteer basis this year with the 49ers. Although he would be a popular choice due to name recognition, Wilks is more of an NFL coach. A source said Wilks is more interested in getting back into the NFL in some capacity than he would be in a head-coaching job in college.
2. The new coach won’t be on the current staff.
Interim coach Tim Brewster will have a decent shot at getting a win or two over the next couple of weeks, because the 49ers’ final two opponents are also pretty weak. And he will get an interview for this job. But I would expect the 49ers to start completely fresh.
3. The hiring will occur sometime in the next two weeks.
Both the early signing period for high school football and the transfer portal open in December, and those dates would be significant to a new football coach. Firing Poggi two weeks before the season ends will give the 49ers a better shot at a late November or early December hiring.
4. The new coach will be in his 30s or 40s and will already be a college head coach.
Hill said Tuesday he wants the new coach to have serious expertise on one side of the ball. I think it will end up with Charlotte hiring an offensive-minded head coach who calls his own plays. It could simply be a coordinator at one of the big schools — that would be the most obvious play — but my guess is that Hill will end up plucking a man who’s been a head coach at a smaller college and has shown already that he can run a program at the college level.
5. The next coach will have a hard time being more beloved than Poggi.
Poggi was a gruff teddy bear who helped many young people in Charlotte. He was an out-of-the-box hire when Hill surprised a lot of people by tabbing him two years ago, with no experience as a collegiate head coach or a coordinator.
He ended up going 6-16 at Charlotte. He and the 49ers had a great home win over East Carolina this year, but also got absolutely blown out in the second half of many games.
Hill said Tuesday of the East Carolina result: “I hate to say this, but unfortunately, in the context of the season, it looks more and more like an outlier. The consistent performance has been inconsistent.”
Was the Poggi experiment ultimately a failure?
“I wouldn’t call it a failure,” Hill said, “because of his impact on our kids. He and his staff invested so much of their energy into this place and this program to try to get it to where we all wanted it to be.”
Poggi showed up for practice unexpectedly on Tuesday morning, the day after he was fired. Practice stopped as Poggi walked onto the field and players hugged him and surrounded him. He spoke to the team for about five minutes — he had also addressed the squad the night before after being fired — and then he left. Unusual, but cool.
6. The next coach won’t promise nearly as much as Poggi.
One of Poggi’s mistakes was his public over-promising about how quickly he could turn the 49ers around. I remember attending his opening press conference in 2022 and being startled at what he said.
“Our goal is very simple,” he said then. “We want to win the (conference). And we want to win it repeatedly. And we want to get to the College Football Playoff…. And you should be asking, ‘What’s your timetable?’ My timetable is now.”
Those were strong words, and ultimately, Poggi couldn’t get the 49ers to back them up. The next coach also needs to remember the 49ers play at Georgia and at North Carolina next season. It’s going to be difficult to win more than five games in 2025.
7. Hill won’t get to fire a fourth football coach.
The 49ers AD is well-respected nationally and just signed a four-year contract extension himself. Charlotte routinely wins conference championships in the Olympic sports and has improved its facilities. The school now has an enrollment of 31,100, Hill said Tuesday, and anyone who’s been on campus knows that its previous reputation as a commuter school with few extras is very outdated.
However, the lack of success of the football program has been a major thorn in the 49ers’ side. Charlotte fans used to complain they didn’t have a football team; now they complain they don’t have a winning football team.
It is rare that a college AD gets to hire three football coaches at the same school, but the next one will be Hill’s third (after Will Healy in 2018 and Poggi in 2022). I could even see him getting to hire a fourth one, but only if the next guy works out and is lured away to a bigger school after 2-3 years.
But how many ADs get to fire four head football coaches at the same school? Very, very few. Hired in early 2018, Hill inherited Brad Lambert as his football coach and fired him after a year. Now he has fired Healy and Poggi, too. It’s been a carousel.
If the next football coach doesn’t succeed, that may spell trouble for Hill, too. For multiple reasons, he and the 49ers really need to get this one right.
