49ers assistant to join Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel as he builds staff
New Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel has hit the ground running in building his initial staff, and he’s bringing a 49ers assistant with him.
San Francisco tight ends coach and assistant head coach Jon Embree will join McDaniel in the same role, a league source confirmed Wednesday.
Embree, 56, just finished his fifth season in San Francisco. Under his stewardship, George Kittle has emerged as one of the best tight ends in the league. In 2018, Kittle recorded 1,377 receiving yards, then a single-season record for a tight end until Kansas City’s Travis Kelce broke the mark with 1,416 in the 2020 season.
“Being able to start my NFL career with [Embree] was the best possible thing for me,” Kittle wrote in an Instagram post Wednesday.
Embree, who grew up in Colorado like McDaniel, has also coached tight ends with the Chiefs and Tampa Bay Buccaneers and had a two-year stint as head coach at Colorado, his alma mater.
Embree has also coached wide receivers and tight ends at Colorado and UCLA, where Daniel Graham and Mercedes Lewis became Mackey Award winners, an honor given to college football’s top tight end.
The son of former NFL wide receiver John Embree, Jon Embree had a short stint in the NFL as a tight end from 1987 to 1990 until an elbow injury ended his career.
The Dolphins are potentially facing a bare cupboard at the tight end position. Mike Gesicki and Durham Smythe, who both set career marks for receptions and yards in 2021, are pending unrestricted free agents. Adam Shaheen is under contract through the 2022 season and Hunter Long, the team’s third-round pick in the 2021 Draft, is signed through 2024 but played sparingly as a rookie.
The San Francisco Chronicle first reported Embree is joining McDaniels’ staff in the same role.
McDaniel is also retaining special teams coordinator Danny Crossman, according to ESPN. Crossman, 55, joined Brian Flores’ initial staff as special teams coordinator in 2019 and was also given the title of assistant head coach prior to the 2021 season.
Under Crossman, kicker Jason Sanders was a first-team All-Pro selection in 2020, but he struggled in 2021, missing eight of 31 field-goal attempts. Punter Matt Palardy also struggled at times in his first season with the team but improved in the second half, being named Week 13 AFC Special Teams Player of the Week. And after trading return specialist Jakeem Grant early in the season, the Dolphins never found a replacement, ranking 30th and 31st in punt return average and kick return average, respectively. The Dolphins’ special teams unit ranked sixth in 2020, according to Football Outsiders efficiency rankings, but regressed to 29th in 2021.
While McDaniel is expected to consider retaining parts of the team’s defensive staff, a key assistant is interviewing for another opportunity.
According to NFL Network, defensive backs coach Gerald Alexander is interviewing Wednesday for the Jacksonville Jaguars’ defensive coordinator vacancy under new coach Doug Pederson.
Alexander, 37, just completed his second season with the Dolphins. A former NFL safety who had a two-year stint with the Jacksonville Jaguars and also briefly played for the Dolphins, Alexander has played a pivotal role in the development of young players such as Jevon Holland and Brandon Jones. Holland and Jones were inserted as starters in the middle of the season and helped lead a defense that finished 10th in Football Outsiders’ efficiency rankings.
This story will be updated.
This story was originally published February 9, 2022 at 2:13 PM.
