On Friday, the San Francisco 49ers formally announced the hiring of Richard Hightower to serve as special teams coach in 2017. The 49ers are on their fourth head coach in as many years, and Kyle Shanahan is bringing in the fourth special teams coordinator in as many years. Hightower follows Derius Swinton, who followed Thomas McGaughey, who followed four years of Brad Seely.
The 49ers special teams was pretty bad in 2014 and 2015, but we saw some improvement in 2016. It came up to the middle of the pack, but that’s an improvement from where it was before.