Who is 49ers quarterbacks coach Rich Scangarello?

I wanted to take some time during the slow season to introduce the San Francisco 49ers newest position coaches. I will be going through them one at a time. Hopefully it helps those that do not know much about them. My next coach in this series is quarterback coach Rich Scangarello.

Rich Scangarello is kind of a local guy for those of us that live in the Sacramento area. He went to Oakmont High in Roseville and graduated from Sacramento State in 1986. He began his coaching career at Oakmont High School, where he coached for three years before working as a graduate assistant just down the road at UC Davis in 1998 and 1999. During his Davis time, he worked with Kevin Daft and JT O’Sullivan, who both were Harlon Hill Trophy finalists (Division II MVP). O’Sullivan was drafted by the Saints in the sixth round of the 2002 draft and Daft was drafted by the Titans in the fifth round of the 1999 draft.

Scangarello then became a graduate assistant at the University of Idaho in 2000. He followed that by working for a year as the offensive coordinator at Minnesota’s Carleton College. He then returned to the University of Idaho as their quarterbacks coach in 2002 and 2003, at the request of then Idaho head coach Tom Cable.

He returned to UC Davis in 2005 as their passing game coordinator and wide receivers coach. He worked with wide receiver Tony Kays who lead the NCAA with 97 receptions that year. That was also the year that UC Davis scored 20 unanswered points to defeat Stanford 20–17. Rich became co-offensive coordinator in 2008, and UC Davis just so happened to end up ranked No. 11 in the FCS in total offense with 426.5 yards per game that year. I like to think that was more than just a coincidence.

In 2009, Scangarello became the assistant quarterbacks coach for the Oakland Raiders under, you guessed it, Tom Cable. I believe Ted Tollner was unofficially the team’s offensive coordinator and Paul Hackett was the quarterbacks coach. Together Scangarello and Hackett had the daunting task of shaping JaMarcus Russell into a franchise quarterback. Laugh out loud, I wonder if Scangarello is still traumatized by that?

His next stop was Millsap College in Mississippi where he was the offensive coordinator, assistant head coach, and quarterbacks coach in 2010 and 2011. They led the SCAC in scoring both season. While there, he put together a QB academy that got this write-up. Here is an interesting article about him putting on a quarterback academy while working at Millsap College.

His next move was to Northern Arizona, where he was the quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator from 2012 to 2014. The Lumberjacks averaged 31.6 points per game his first season, but their points per game average fell off after their quarterback graduated that year. Scangarello and he was not brought back after two underwhelming seasons by the Lumberjacks offense.

Here is some video from when he was the offensive coordinator at Northern Arizona:

That was probably a very lucky thing for him because he ended up as an offensive quality control assistant under Kyle Shanahan in Atlanta for the 2015 season. When you figure that Kyle was impressed enough to hire him as his quarterback coach for the 49ers, and it is thought that he was the first coach hired by Kyle, it was very lucky indeed.

Scangarello did leave Atlanta in 2016 to be the offensive coordinator for Wagner College. However, I think that may have been because all of the position coaching positions had already been filled in Atlanta. Let's hope he and Shanahan work well together and can turn the 49ers quarterback position into something special.