49ers Finalize 2026 Coaching Staff
The 49ers made a number of coaching changes this offseason with defensive coordinator Robert Saleh accepting the Titans’ head coaching job and taking a number of assistants to Tennessee.
San Francisco gradually filled its vacancies and recently announced a full staff, including official titles for new hires and several internal promotions.
Jerry Gray arrived in San Francisco in February and has since been announced as the team’s defensive pass-game coordinator. He is entering his fourth decade of coaching defensive backs and will work closely with cornerbacks coach Ray Brown.
The 49ers also promoted a few members of their defensive staff. Johnny Holland, who has primarily worked with linebackers in his nine seasons with the club, will now serve as the defensive run game coordinator. Replacing him as the linebackers coach will be K.J. Wright, who spent 11 years playing the position for the Seahawks and Raiders. He first joined the 49ers in 2024 as a defensive quality control coach.
The team made a number of internal promotions on the offensive side of the ball, too. Joe Graves was promoted from offensive assistant/quarterbacks coach to run game coordinator. Taking his role will be Jacob Webster, who is being promoted from an offensive quality control role. The same is true of Deuce Schwartz, now an offensive assistant/tight ends coach.
Roman Sapolu, who was also hired in February, will be the assistant offensive line coach, overseeing the position he once played at Oregon State and coached at multiple college programs. He will serve under offensive line coach/assistant head coach Chris Foerster.
49ers Announce Finalized 2025 Coaching Staff
The annual poaching of the 49ers coaching staff happened again this offseason, and San Francisco has done some hiring and shuffling to fill out the vacancies. Here’s how Kyle Shanahan‘s staff will look in 2025, based on their finalized announcement of staff updates. 
Most of the changes on staff came on offense where we’ve already reported that Klay Kubiak and Mick Lombardi were promoted into roles as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach, respectively. Additional promotions were granted to wide receivers coach Leonard Hankerson, who adds passing game specialist to his title, offensive line coach Chris Foerster, who exchanged the additional title of run game coordinator for assistant head coach of offense, and Andrew Hayes-Stoker, who will serve as offensive assistant/wide receivers coach after two years as defensive quality control and two years as assistant defensive backs coach. We also see title changes for assistant offensive line coach Joe Graves, who will now serve as offensive assistant/quarterbacks coach, and Jacob Webster, who will switch from defensive quality control to offensive quality control.
The defense saw fewer changes as the team made a pretty simple transition at coordinator from Nick Sorensen to a familiar face in Robert Saleh. With Saleh returning to the post, most of the position coaches remained the same, though we did already report the hiring of Ray Brown as defensive backs/cornerbacks coach. We were also already aware of the hiring of Gus Bradley to the staff in some role, but the team’s recent announcement informs us that Bradley will mirror Foerster’s role as assistant head coach of defense.
Additional updates to the defensive staff saw the hirings of Greg Scruggs as assistant defensive line coach and Jake Lynch as defensive quality control coach. Scruggs comes to San Francisco two years removed from his last job as defensive line coach at Wisconsin. Prior to that, he had one year of experience as assistant defensive line coach for the Jets in 2022 and two years of experience as defensive line coach at the University of Cincinnati. Lynch, the son of president of football operations/general manager John Lynch, joins the staff after a year at the University of Washington as a defensive graduate assistant, a role he held following the end of his playing career as a linebacker at Stanford.
On special teams, we knew that Brant Boyer had stepped in as the new special teams coordinator, replacing Brian Schneider. The recent staff announcement disclosed the rest of the special teams staff, as well, including assistant special teams coach Colt Anderson and special teams quality control coach Ronald Blair. Anderson joins the staff after spending only one year as the Titans special teams coordinator last year. Prior to that, he spent four seasons as assistant special teams coach for the Bengals. Blair was a Bill Walsh NFL Diversity Coaching Fellow working with the defensive line last year but will work on special teams in his second season with the team.
Lastly, the team announced that Patrick Hagedorn, who had started with the team as assistant to the coaching staff in 2017 and became assistant to the head coach in 2021, has been promoted to chief of staff.
With that staff, the 49ers will head into the 2025 NFL season. After an injury-riddled, disappointing 2024 campaign, Shanahan and company are sure to head into the next season with a renewed drive to get back to the Super Bowl for the third time in seven years.