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Bears Hire Former 49ers Special Teams Coach Richard Hightower

Hightower's unit seem unprepared most of the season.
Grant Cohn|
Bears Hire Former 49ers Special Teams Coach Richard Hightower
Bears Hire Former 49ers Special Teams Coach Richard Hightower

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The 49ers just lost their worst position coach -- Richard Hightower.

Hightower signed with the Chicago Bears on Sunday to be their new special teams coach, according to The NFL Network's Tom Pelissero. It's unclear if Hightower's contract was up with the 49ers or he simply decided to leave the 49ers and take a lateral move with an inferior team. Either way, the 49ers most likely will find an upgrade.

With the exception of the divisional playoff game against the Packers, when the 49ers special teams arguably won the game with a punt block and a touchdown, Hightower's unit seem unprepared most of the season. It never stopped a fake punt. It gave up a kickoff return for a touchdown. It consistently allowed poor field position and fumbled punts and kickoffs. 

The unit improved during the playoffs when Deebo Samuel started returning kicks, but that's to be expected as he arguably is the best player in the league, and he probably won't return kicks in the upcoming regular season. Which means the 49ers need a new coach who can turn this unit around. And it shouldn't be hard to find an upgrade over Hightower.

The 49ers have gotten rid of two assistant coaches so far this offseason -- Hightower and Jon Emree, who was the tight ends coach and assistant head coach. Anthony Lynn will replace Embree as the assistant head coach, but the 49ers still need to hire a tight ends coach and now a special teams coach as well

Stay tuned.

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Grant Cohn
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.

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