Bears hire Phil Snow as senior defensive analyst

On Monday, Chicago Bears head coach Matt Eberflus announced that they have hired 67-year-old Phil Snow as their senior defensive analyst, the position he said they wanted to add last week.

Chicago had been coaching a man down since defensive coordinator Alan Williams stepped away from the team, and with Eberflus taking on the responsibility of playcaller, he wanted another experienced voice at Halas Hall.

Snow has been coaching football since 1976, when he started as the Berkeley (California) High School defensive backs coach, and his most recent gig was as the defensive coordinator with the Carolina Panthers (2020-2022). His first college job came in 1982 when he was the defensive backs coach at Boise State.

He first landed an NFL role in 2005 with the Detroit Lions, where he was a defensive assistant, and then in 2006, he was promoted to linebackers coach for their new head coach, Rod Marinelli.

It was through Marinelli that Ford met Eberflus a decade ago, and now they’ll work together for the first time.

“We certainly welcome him and his experience,” Eberflus said earlier today. “He’ll be doing advanced scouting for our defensive staff. He’ll be giving us summaries of all the situations during the course of the week. He’ll be here in the building the entire week. Is he going to be at games on the headset doing all of that? No, he’s not. He’s not going to be at the games. He’s not going to be there functioning as a coach during gameday. He’ll still be an analyst that’s going to be helping us out for the advance scouting.”