The San Francisco 49ers made a couple of changes this offseason with their coaching staff, primarily due to departures. The biggest loss was defensive coordinator Robert Saleh, who was hired as the Tennessee Titans head coach. Saleh took top defensive assistant Gus Bradley with him.
San Francisco responded with a splash, hiring Raheem Morris as their defensive coordinator following his stint as the head coach of the Atlanta Falcons. Morris has familiarity with head coach Kyle Shanahan across multiple
stops, and will hopefully provide some stability for the 49ers, who are on their fifth defensive coordinator in five years.
But one of the more under-the-radar hires for San Francisco was Matt Eberflus as the team’s assistant head coach of the defense. Last offseason, the 49ers went with the same structure, hiring Saleh as their defensive coordinator and a veteran coach with coordinator experience in Bradley as the assistant head coach of the defense.
Bradley had a key role with the 49ers, with many players praising him during the season. But rather than staying in San Francisco, he followed Saleh to Tennessee as the Titans defensive coordinator.
So the 49ers went after another veteran coach who has seen success and struggles as a defensive coordinator, hiring Matt Eberflus, who was let go after one year as the Dallas Cowboys defensive coordinator in 2025.
Eberflus, 55, was the head coach of the Chicago Bears from 2022 to 2024 after a successful stint as the defensive coordinator of the Indianapolis Colts from 2018 to 2021. During that four-year stretch in Indy, the Colts had three top-10 defenses in points allowed.
Now, he’ll join the 49ers staff, adding another veteran coach to the fray under Morris. What led to the decision to hire Eberflus?
“Similar to what Gus did last year, I think when you’re on the defensive side of ball, I love having a guy there who’s called plays, who’s built defenses before,” Shanahan said of Eberflus. “It’s really important as a play caller, as a guy doing the scheme, that you have other people who’ve been through it to bounce things off of.
“You got position coaches. Position coaches kind of get so in their world of what their position’s doing that they can’t step back and see the big thing. It’s like being on offense, you know, with like Klay [Kubiak] and I, we use our QCs and stuff. We use guys who aren’t always locked into a position to help us with game plans and things like that. And when you can get a guy like that, it makes up for him for Raheem. Because if you don’t, you know, then he’s asking offense guys stuff a lot and they’re just not always in the same position in the season.”
With Morris and Eberflus, the 49ers have a pair of former head coaches with a ton of experience as defensive playcallers who likely will need a few years to re-establish themselves. That provides more stability for a coaching staff that hasn’t had much at the top level over the past few years.
