SANTA CLARA, Calif. — In an offseason that figures to bring plenty of change after a 6-11 finish, the San Francisco 49ers made their first major move Monday, relieving Brian Schneider of his duties as special teams coordinator, sources told ESPN.

Schneider’s firing comes as little surprise after he oversaw a special teams unit that was among the worst in the NFL in 2024. The Niners finished 32nd in the league in expected points added on special teams at negative-47.67, which was nearly 24 more points lost than the next-closest team (the Atlanta Falcons at negative-23.9).

In San Francisco’s lost season, special teams’ errors seemed to happen nearly every week, including missed field goals, successful fake punts allowed, costly penalties, muffed return attempts and a middling punting unit.

At the team’s bye in late October, coach Kyle Shanahan said he had “no concerns” with Schneider and that moving on from him “hasn’t entered my head at all.” But Shanahan also was holding out hope that things would turn for the better on special teams.

In November, Shanahan said the Niners were spending “a lot” of meeting time and practice time trying to improve on special teams but also acknowledged the trickle-down effect of the team’s injuries also wasn’t helping those efforts.

“We have mixed a lot of guys in there,” Shanahan said then. “I do think guys are getting better, but we’ve got to make sure that we don’t make those dumb plays where we can cause a penalty, where we can cause a turnover and those are the things that we’ve really got to clean up.”

That turnaround never really happened, though, as kicker Jake Moody struggled in the second half of the season, making 11 of his final 20 field goal attempts from Week 10 to Week 18. The Niners also finished with 18 special teams’ penalties, tied for eighth most in the league.

In Sunday’s season-ending loss to the Arizona Cardinals, Moody missed a 47-yard field goal attempt and the 49ers allowed the Cardinals to convert a fake punt that led to Arizona’s first field goal of the game.

The 49ers hired Schneider in 2022 to replace Richard Hightower, who had been the special teams coordinator since Shanahan’s arrival in 2017. Schneider previously held the same role for the Seattle Seahawks from 2010 to 2020.