Grant Cohn: 49ers' salvation might be waiting for a phone call

Dear Denise and John,

These are the five steps you need to take to save your 49ers, the worst franchise in American sports. I'm making this as easy for you as possible.

Step 1: Fire your son.

You allowed Jed to run your franchise for almost nine years. Enough already. He is a national disgrace. No one credible will work under him ever again because he's meddlesome, and he thinks he knows football. But he has no clue. Take back your franchise and save your son from further embarrassment.

Step 2: Fire Chip Kelly.

You cannot waste another season with this college coach and his gimmick college offense. Gimmick colleges offenses don't work in the NFL.

Kelly is the Colin Kaepernick of head coaches. Both had success initially in the NFL due to the league's inability to defend the read-option. Then the league adjusted to the read-option and figured out how to stop it. Since then, Kelly and Kaepernick's careers have suffered a steady, steep decline.

Kelly's gimmick college offense currently ranks 32nd out of 32 teams. What's more, the offense is killing Kelly's defense, which should be the strength of the 49ers.

As long as Kelly is the head coach, your team never will have a good defense or a competent defensive coordinator. Those people flee from Kelly. He has to go.

And he might even choose to leave, which would be awfully convenient. According to Pro Football Weekly:

'Kelly's representatives (are) testing the waters around several plum college job openings … (such as) LSU, Baylor and Purdue, and (possibly) Texas, Auburn, USC and Kelly's old stomping grounds in Oregon … Kelly's 'people' have been quietly planting seeds at most of the schools mentioned above, making it clear that if they do in fact end up with a search for a new coach, they might be pleasantly surprised by Kelly's willingness and desire to talk.'

Even Kelly seems to know he has to go. This one is a no-brainer.

Step 3: Fire Trent Baalke.

Another no-brainer.

You can't let Baalke lead the search for the next head coach. No good coach will tie his fate to a GM who can't identify talent in a quarterback or a wide receiver. Baalke attracts only desperate head-coaching candidates who have no other offers from NFL teams. Coaches like Kelly. You want a coach who's in demand.

Step 4: Hire Nick Saban or David Shaw.

Go after the best. You're the 49ers. None of this gimmick nonsense.

Saban should be your first choice. He is the No. 1 coach in college football — even better than Jim Harbaugh, who never has won a championship at any level of the sport. Saban has won five national championships, and may win his sixth this season. He's a future NCAA Hall of Famer. He has nothing left to prove in college football.

A point of fact, Saban left the Miami Dolphins after two seasons with a losing record. The Dolphins never gave him the control he wanted, and he was dissatisfied. More on control in a minute.

According to reports, Saban considered leaving the University of Alabama this past offseason to coach the New York Giants, and boxing promoter Bob Arum actually called the Giants on Saban's behalf.

'Here's what happened,' Arum said, according to CBSSports.com. 'I get a call from Nick Khan, who's an agent at CAA (Creative Artists Agency), and is a good friend of mine. He says, 'Bob, I know you're a good friend of (New York Giants chairman and executive vice president) Steve Tisch. I have a colleague here at CAA,' and I forget the guy's name (it's Jimmy Sexton), 'who represents Nick Saban. And Saban would be very interested in the Giants job.''

Saban allegedly wanted $10 million a year to coach the Giants, who instead decided to promote their offensive coordinator, Ben McAdoo, to head coach.

Denise and John, don't be cheap like the Giants. Offer Saban $10 million a year. Offer him more if you have to. Pay him whatever he wants. You own the fourth-richest franchise in the NFL, a franchise worth $3 billion. A few million dollars is nothing to you.

Also offer Saban full control of the roster. Make him the GM and the head coach. He wants full control over his team, so give him full control.

If you offer him all of this, and he still doesn't want to coach the 49ers, make a similar offer to David Shaw. Give him full control over the roster and $8 million a year. That's an offer he can't refuse. He currently earns just $3.9 million annually at Stanford.

Step 5: Leave the coach alone.

Whomever you hire, Saban or Shaw, stay out of his way. Don't micromanage him. Let him make every single decision, including which quarterback to draft, which free agents to sign and how much money to spend.

You just write the checks.

Can you handle that?

Grant Cohn writes sports columns and the 'Inside the 49ers' blog for The Press Democrat's website. You can reach him at grantcohn@gmail.com.