Jaguars’ Liam Coen, 49ers’ Robert Saleh Conflict Over Signal-Stealing Accusations

The pregame tiff between San Francisco 49ers defensive coordinator Robert Saleh and Jacksonville Jaguars coach Liam Coen over accusations of “authorized” signal stealing by the Jags spilled over into the postgame.

Coen might be seen yelling at Saleh as he was being held again by offensive lineman Robert Hainsey following Jacksonville’s 26-21 win over San Francisco on Sunday. Coen was heard shouting “Maintain my title out of your mouth” in a video posted by Motion Sports activities Jax.

“No huge deal,” Coen mentioned in a postgame interview. “I’m simply going to maintain that between us proper now. That’s it.”

It appeared like an even bigger deal than that as the 2 coaches had been yelling at one another as they walked off the sector. Saleh had referred to as Coen’s employees “elite” with regards to stealing defensive alerts — in a authorized vogue.

Coen brushed apart these remarks when requested throughout the week and would not speak about it with the media after the sport. However his gamers noticed what had occurred and used it as motivation on Sunday.

“You utilize the whole lot you possibly can,” quarterback Trevor Lawrence mentioned. “In case you’re going to offer me free gas, you are taking it. That’s one thing that you just all the time do. However on the finish of the day you bought to go play the sport. That stuff doesn’t actually matter. You handle enterprise and execute and discover a option to win the sport, which we did at this time. So it feels nice.”

Saleh mentioned on Thursday many coaches who labored underneath Sean McVay on the Los Angeles Rams or Kevin O’Connell in Minnesota are expert at stealing indicators. Coen spent 4 seasons on McVay’s employees in Los Angeles whereas Jaguars offensive coordinator Grant Udinski spent the previous three seasons working for O’Connell on the Minnesota Vikings.

“They’ve received legally, a extremely superior signal-stealing sort system the place they all the time discover a option to put themselves in an advantageous scenario,” he mentioned. “They do an ideal job with it. … So, we’ve received to be nice with our alerts and we’ve received to be nice with our communication to fight a number of the tells that we’d give on the sector. They’re virtually elite in that regard.”

Niners coach Kyle Shanahan mentioned that he believed Saleh was making an attempt to enrich the Jaguars employees however that using a loaded phrase like “signal stealing” took away from that.

Shanahan mentioned he did not see the postgame interplay however mentioned he does not suppose Coen “needs to be that delicate about it.”

“We don’t completely care if coaches are (ticked) off. It has no impact on the sport,” he mentioned. “I believe Saleh’s having an enormous mouth about what they’re good at shouldn’t be unlawful, there’s nothing unlawful about it. He used the phrases ‘sign-stealing,’ and headlines (had been) made with these couple of phrases, that gave the notion of that. I don’t suppose that was the aim.”

Jaguars defensive lineman Arik Armstead, who spent 4 seasons taking part in underneath Saleh in San Francisco, mentioned he believes it is not a significant difficulty.

“I do know coaches get aggressive,” he mentioned. “They’re two nice coaches and clearly each fiery. I don’t actually know what that was about.”

Reporting by The Related Press.

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