49ers Interview Chris Tabor to be their Special Teams Coordinator

The 49ers need to get this hire right.

Grant Cohn | Jan 15, 2025

Dec 31, 2023; Jacksonville, Florida, USA; Carolina Panthers interim head coach Chris Tabor looks on against the Jacksonville Jaguars in the third quarter at EverBank Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Jeremy Reper-Imagn Images / Jeremy Reper-Imagn Images

In this story:

San Francisco 49ers

The 49ers need to get this hire right.

They've already fired two special teams coordinators since Kyle Shanahan became the head coach in 2017 -- first Richard Hightower and then Brian Schneider. Now they need to hire a third and final special teams coordinator. And there's no guarantee Shanahan will be around long enough to hire a fourth.

So Tuesday, the 49ers interviewed former Carolina Panthers special teams coordinator and interim head coach Chris Tabor according to ESPN's Adam Schefter. Previously, the 49ers interviewed Detroit Lions assistant special teams coach Jett Modkins and Denver Broncos assistant special teams coordinator Chris Banjo. So that makes three candidates they've interviewed so far. Plus, last week head coach Kyle Shanahan said he hoped to move former 49ers defensive coordinator Nick Sorensen to special teams coordinator if he agreed to take the demotion.

Considering how many candidates the 49ers have interviewed, it seems Sorensen may not want to take the demotion to special teams coordinator. Instead, he might request his release. Which would be good news for the 49ers. They need a better special teams coordinator than Sorensen. He has just one year of experience coaching special teams and it didn't go well. He would not be a serious hire.

Tabor has been an NFL special teams coordinator since 2011. He did not coach in 2024 but he seems poised to reenter the league and should have multiple suitors. It seems he would be a good hire.

Download and follow The Cohn Zohn Podcast.

Published Jan 15, 2025

GRANT COHN

Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn's channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers' official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.