SANTA CLARA – Eric Mangini loved his time in Cleveland, but he did not like the results he provided for the ardent fan base as the Browns’ head coach in 2009 and ’10.
“My biggest disappointment was not to produce the winner that they deserved there,” Mangini said on Thursday as the 49ers’ first-year defensive coordinator gets set to return to face the Browns on Sunday.
After back-to-back 5-11 seasons in his only two years in Cleveland, Mangini stepped away from coaching to spend a couple years as a television analyst. He got back into the grind when then-49ers coach Jim Harbaugh offered him an offensive coaching position.
Stay in the game with the latest updates on your beloved Bay Area and California sports teams! Sign up here for our All Access Daily newsletter.
“I hadn’t worked on offense since the start of my career, so it was another chance for me to get outside of my comfort zone -- another chance for me to grow,” Mangini said.
The next year Mangini accepted Harbaugh’s offer to coach tight ends. After two seasons on offense, Mangini returned to the other side this season to serve as the 49ers’ defensive coordinator on Jim Tomsula’s staff.
After a rough start to the season, Mangini and the 49ers’ defense appears to be showing vast improvement. The 49ers have held the opposition to 20 points or fewer in three of their past four games. Quarterbacks Carson Palmer and Jay Cutler have had their lowest outputs in back-to-back games against Mangini's defense.
“What you see is young guys hit the midpoint of the season and there should be jumps,” Mangini said. “There should be incremental jumps with those guys because they are no longer rookies. There’s familiarity with the system, familiarity with the players, familiarity with their strengths and weaknesses. There’s a learning curve for everybody involved.
San Francisco 49ers
“But I really do believe at a lot of points in the season we’ve played really good defense and there’s been some stuff that we’ve had to get corrected. And there’s been times, obviously, where we didn’t match the intensity that we should’ve with our opponent."
The defense on Sunday figures to have six first-year 49ers starters: linemen Mike Purcell and Quinton Dial, linebackers Gerald Hodges (likely to start in place of injured Michael Wilhoite) and Aaron Lynch, cornerback Kenneth Acker, and safety Jaquiski Tartt.
Early in the season, the 49ers’ defense seemed to have a difficult time acclimating to Mangini’s system. The defense’s goal was to create confusion for the opposing offense, but oftentimes would find players caught out of position at the snap of the ball due to miscommunications. But the 49ers have shown a dramatic reduction in those errors as the season has progressed.
“There are a lot of new people coming together in a situation where everybody has to see things as one,” Mangini said.