Kyle Shanahan hoping for some unconventional help to win matchup with former 49ers assistant Robert Saleh

Kyle Shanahan will go against Robert Saleh as a head coach for the first time in his career on Monday when the San Francisco 49ers host the New York Jets.

Saleh was hired by Shanahan as his defensive coordinator when he got the job as 49ers head coach.

After four seasons, including a Super Bowl run in the 2019 campaign and a defensive performance in 2020 that belied the plethora of injuries the 49ers suffered, Saleh was hired as the Jets head coach.

Saleh's return to Levi's Stadium on Monday will be his first since that departure. While Shanahan didn't give much thought to gameplanning against a former colleague who knows his offense extremely well, he joked he could use some additional assistance from the stadium staff to get his now adversary's head.

"Saleh is very sound. And what he does, he's not going to overthink it. So I'm not going to overthink it," Shanahan told a press conference on Saturday. 

"I just hope our stadium people don't let them run the stairs. Won't let him get any work out in and hopefully that'll rattle him a little bit.

"I know Brich [Jets defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich] so well, too. Brich's a great coach and a good friend also that I have a history with. So, got a lot of guys on their staff that I've had a history with, friends too, which has a different element. Just makes it more fun to talk to each other after and before a little bit. But I don't see really much relevance once the game starts."

Saleh has long since been running the stairs in the stadium on the day of the game, with the intensity he displayed on the sideline a defining feature of his time with the 49ers.

Whether he'll be permitted to continue the tradition back at Levi's remains to be seen, but there's no doubt that Shanahan and the 49ers will need to have plenty up their sleeve in their gameplan to get the better of Saleh and one of the better defenses in the NFL.