York is retarded apparently. They were actually under the cap this year I think and he goes and fires his GM and coach after that. I have no sympathy for Erickson as he has been wrohtless as an NFL coach twice now it seems but Donohue got shafted. We should bring in Donohue as GM here.

[QUOTE=smootsmack]Well yeah ultimately that's the big question. Does the Niners salary cap situation set the next head coach up for failure, or is there a way around that mess?[/QUOTE]
The cap is cooling down, depending on how TO's numbers went. (though Barlow's new contract sucks for them) Ericson was only hired to man the team while they sucked. Can you imaging expecting to win with that roster?
Also, Did you know that Ericson's arrival marked the first time in more than 20 years that the 49ers didn't use the west coast offense?

Prediction:

The 49ers will hire a GM and a coach who are willing to work cheap. They are already going to pay Erickson $7.5M not to coach the team over the next 3 years and Donahue is going to pull down something near $4M not to be the GM.

Williams makes close to $2M here as a coordinator so it is going to take a huge offer from SF for him to go there. That's not gonna happen.

Blache pulls down just over $1M so he might be tempted by an offer of $2M to go to SF. But if he isn't smart enough to see that the squad there is just plain awful, then maybe it would be no loss for him to leave here.

I think I heard on the radio that the Niners planned on hiring a coach first and then looking for a general manager. Isn't that sort of backwards? Isn't the GM supposed to play a part in hiring the head coach?