New Dolphins coach Jeff Hafley made his first reported hire on Friday, snagging Chris Tabor away from the Buffalo Bills to be the team\u2019s new special teams coach.<\/p>\n
Tabor, whose hiring was confirmed by a league source, was available because the Bills staff is in flux following the firing of coach Sean McDermott.<\/p>\n
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Tabor has served as the special teams coordinator for four NFL teams: the Cleveland Browns (2011-2017), Chicago Bears (2018-2021), Carolina Panthers (2022 and 2023) and the Bills this past season.<\/p>\n
After Frank Reich\u2019s dismissal, he served as the Panthers\u2019 interim coach to finish the 2023 season and went 1-5 in that role. He also coached the Bears in one game (a loss) in 2021 when Chicago coach Matt Nagy was sidelined by the COVID-19 virus.<\/p>\n
Tabor, 54, will be the Dolphins\u2019 third special teams coach in three years, following Danny Crossman, who was dismissed after the 2024 season, and Craig Aukerman, who was hired a year ago but wasn\u2019t retained by Hafley.<\/p>\n
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Tabor, who grew up in Missouri, was a quarterback at Benedictine College and worked at six universities before breaking into the NFL as the Bears\u2019 special teams coach in 2008.<\/p>\n
He takes over a unit that a has one of the league\u2019s best returners last season in Malik Washington but also has a decision to make at kicker (between free agent Riley Patterson and under-contract Jason Sanders) and at punter (Jake Bailey is an impending free agent).<\/p>\n
The Dolphins had several special teams breakdowns last season, including a Patriots kickoff return for a touchdown in Week 2, a costly roughing penalty against Zach Sieler in a Week 3 game at Buffalo and a botched handling of an on-side kick by New Orleans in November.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New Dolphins coach Jeff Hafley made his first reported hire on Friday, snagging Chris Tabor away from the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":701045,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2049],"tags":[53,260,391,30704,54,102092,217,7,35823,16253,18863,8628,6450,216,251,2087,896,6,208,34653,30867,23816],"class_list":{"0":"post-701044","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-miami-dolphins","8":"tag-buffalo-bills","9":"tag-carolina-panthers","10":"tag-chicago-bears","11":"tag-chris-tabor","12":"tag-cleveland-browns","13":"tag-danny-crossman","14":"tag-dolphins","15":"tag-football","16":"tag-interim-coach","17":"tag-jake-bailey","18":"tag-jason-sanders","19":"tag-jeff-hafley","20":"tag-malik-washington","21":"tag-miami","22":"tag-miami-dolphins","23":"tag-miamidolphins","24":"tag-new-orleans","25":"tag-nfl","26":"tag-patriots","27":"tag-riley-patterson","28":"tag-special-teams-coach","29":"tag-zach-sieler"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115949136054611241","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/701044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=701044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/701044\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/701045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=701044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=701044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=701044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}