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FRISCO, Texas — Dallas Cowboys special teams coordinator Nick Sorensen said Thursday his three seasons with the San Francisco 49ers were a chapter that taught him a lot, three days before Dallas hosts San Francisco at AT&T Stadium. He was the 49ers’ defensive coordinator in 2024.
Sorensen joined San Francisco in 2022 as a defensive assistant after a season as special teams coordinator of the Jacksonville Jaguars. He was on the 49ers’ defensive staff when they reached Super Bowl LVIII after the 2023 season.
The 49ers went 6-11 in 2024 and fired Sorensen in January 2025. Dallas hired him later that month to coach special teams under Brian Schottenheimer, who had worked with him in Seattle and Jacksonville. When the teams last met on Oct. 27, 2024, Sorensen was running San Francisco’s defense in a 30-24 win.
Sorensen had gone back to coaching defense when he got to San Francisco, after running special teams in Jacksonville.
“My chapter, I thought it was great. I mean, I learned a lot,” Sorensen said. “I was just coming off of being coaching special teams in Jacksonville, so I had gone back to defense, and then it was cool because we went to a Super Bowl. So we had some really good teams. I was around some really cool coaches and really, really good players too. So it’s like you said, it’s another chapter, and you’re always growing and learning from being around different people.”
Nick Sorensen On Brant Boyer’s 49ers Special Teams
Sorensen still knows players and coaches in San Francisco’s building. The 49ers’ special teams now belong to Brant Boyer, a former New York Jets assistant whom San Francisco hired after firing Brian Schneider following the 2024 season.
“Just because I know guys over there, players and coaches,” Sorensen explained. “I think it’s, I think the coolest thing. It’s a good challenge for us because they’re a really good team. They’ve won a lot of games. I think they’re sound everywhere.”
“Their special teams plays really hard. I got a lot of respect for Brant Boyer and what he’s done historically with the Jets and then going to San Fran,” Sorensen continued. “I think all his units are always very sound. They’re very physical, kind of like how he played when he was a player, and just got a lot of respect for the whole team.”
Nick Sorensen On Kyle Shanahan’s Motion
Sorensen spent three seasons on coach Kyle Shanahan’s staff, and he sees San Francisco’s motion as a way of hiding the tells that offenses and defenses look for.
“Just that they do a lot of them, and he’s always trying to find different ways to do it to give themselves the advantage and try and find the matchups that they want, like everybody does,” Sorensen said. “I think you want to, in anything, make things look the same and do something different. I think that’s in offense, defense, special teams.”
“As much as things can be just like, and you can do something else off of it, I think that’s football, especially today,” Sorensen added. “And I think a lot of offenses and defenses focus a lot on that because you’re looking for the tells. And there’s always tells, and if you can hide those and not give pre-snap or post-snap tells, that’s football.”
When Sorensen was in San Francisco, receiver Deebo Samuel and running back Christian McCaffrey could do much of each other’s jobs. Fullback Kyle Juszczyk and tight end George Kittle still give the 49ers that kind of flexibility.
“I think it, yeah, and with Deebo, for a while there, I know when I was there, it was almost like Deebo and Christian could both do what the other one did to a certain degree,” Sorensen said. “So there was different pieces there that they almost were interchangeable, and then Juice has been doing so much. And plus, those guys have been in that system for so long. That’s a big part of it too.”
“When guys are familiar with what they’re doing, they can probably add different tweaks to how they do alignments and creating bunches or motions, whether it’s jetting or moving out back to in,” Sorensen noted. “And I think a lot of that is they’ve been in it for so long that to expand it a little bit here and there, it makes it easier.”
The Cowboys (4-5) host the 49ers (7-1) on Sunday at AT&T Stadium, with kickoff set for 3:25 p.m. CT on Fox.
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