As Robert Saleh faced career uncertainty for the first time in a while during the offseason, he knew one thing for sure: If he was going to return to being a defensive coordinator, he wanted to do it with the San Francisco 49ers.

After the Niners parted ways with coordinator Nick Sorensen in January, the team quickly locked in on hiring Saleh. And, barring another head coaching opportunity, Saleh had a similar idea in mind. When Saleh didn't land the Jacksonville Jaguars' head job, he came back to the 49ers on Jan. 25, reuniting with coach Kyle Shanahan and the franchise that gave him his first coordinator opportunity.

Speaking to Bay Area media for the first time since his return Thursday, Saleh said his loyalty to the Niners is a product of not just the chance they initially provided him in 2017 but also of how they stuck by him when his first two years as coordinator didn't go well, Nick Wagoner of ESPN reports,

"I have a tremendous amount of respect for this organization," Saleh said. "If you think about those first two years as the coordinator in '17 and '18, it wasn't easy, and it could have been very easy for them to move on for me. I'm indebted to this organization, to those men for the rest of my life. They stuck with me, and we made it happen. We did what we needed to do, and the rest is history. I'm excited about the opportunity to get a chance to do it again with them."

Though Saleh still leans heavily on many of the Seattle-style defensive principles and slogans from his previous stint in San Francisco (he was wearing a black bracelet with "All Gas, No Brake" in white letters Thursday), he said the defense has evolved from when he was last in red and gold.

"You're always trying to stay two years ahead of offense," Saleh said. "When we went to the Jets, there was a lot of different things that we started to do, and even now while we have some things from the Jets, there's stuff that has evolved over the course of the last four years here, and obviously with the league that there's stuff happening.

"Over this offseason, a lot of really cool concepts, a lot of really cool things. Some things are the same, some things are the same from the Jets, some things are meshed, some things are coming in that's new. ... A lot of it may seem similar but there's a lot of nuances that makes a difference."

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