The San Francisco 49ers search for a head coach and general manager entered its fourth week on Monday. The next step in the process is planned for this weekend when the 49ers meet with Kyle Shanahan, George Paton, and Terry McDonough to potentially finalize the head coach and general manager.

On Tuesday, 49ers CEO Jed York was at San Jose State for the launch of the Institute for the Study of Sport, Society and Social Change, and he took a minute to speak with reporters. He stayed on point, talking about culture and patience in the search process.

“The message is we’re going to re-establish a championship culture,” York said. “We’re not going to do that by filling a job quickly. We need to be patient. We need to be willing to wait. “And when we get the right people, we’ll start putting everything into place.”

Continue taking shots for every mention of culture.

I would not have expected anything more specific from York at this point. By all accounts in the media and behind the scenes, Kyle Shanahan is going to be the next head coach of the San Francisco 49ers.

However, there remain two notable issues.

The first is that he cannot formally sign until after the Super Bowl. It sounds like they have a general idea of how this will all work, and something will get done. The second is the team appears to be looking to have Shanahan effectively pick the GM with which he can work best. They are hoping it will be either Paton or McDonough, but there are no guarantees on that. And if they don’t get that done, then the GM process gets re-opened, complicating matters.

And so, we are left to wait and be patient that this will get worked out. And just because it has been so long, how about a throwback to the days of 2011 free agency?