Ejiro Evero preps for another Super Bowl and big career step
It started with a Florida vacation. Ejiro Evero hit up Disney World and visited with a former college teammate, who at the time was a low-level staffer with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. That led to a chance meeting with Monte Kiffin, then the Bucs’ defensive coordinator, and an impromptu job offer.
And now, 15 years later, Evero is about to find himself on a Super Bowl sideline for the third time, brandishing one of the most well-rounded — yet unheralded — coaching résumés in football. Good luck finding another coach who at 41 has been part of three conference championships, served as an assistant in all three phases (offense, defense and special teams), gone to the playoffs in nine of his 14 NFL seasons and trained under coaches such as Vic Fangio, Dom Capers, Wade Phillips and Sean McVay, not to mention Kiffin.
“There are people that never go to the playoffs in their career, and this guy — it’s a joke,” newly hired Denver Broncos coach Nathaniel Hackett said facetiously. “It’s just unbelievable the things he’s done, with coaching and the things he’s persevered through.”
Hackett was that low-level Bucs assistant all those years ago. The two played alongside each other at UC Davis, and back then Evero initially thought Hackett was “obnoxious” because he talked too much. But they became close friends, and win or lose Sunday, Evero will soon move out of the shadows to become Hackett’s defensive coordinator in Denver, a move neither can acknowledge until after it becomes official because of the NFL’s anti-tampering rules.
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But what can be acknowledged is Evero’s winding path and the unexpected turns that have shaped his identity and coaching style.
“He’s very bright, knows a lot of football but knows how to work with players,” said Phillips, the Rams’ defensive coordinator from 2017 to 2019. “That’s the key thing. They trust him.”
Born in England, where his father attended Essex College, Evero grew up in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., some 40 miles east of L.A. He was a multisport athlete and a good student with a dream of making it to the NFL. Evero was a standout safety at UC Davis and signed with the Raiders as a college free agent, but he never cracked the 53-man roster.
So he returned to his alma mater, a place he said laid the foundation for his future.
“I really solidified my own personal identity and my own personal values at that time,” he said, “just being a product of the culture of the football program, the people that I met.”
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For a year after graduating in 2004, Evero assisted his former coach Bob Biggs at UC Davis while also juggling his own training and NFL tryouts. Workouts with the New York Giants, Carolina Panthers and Green Bay Packers didn’t pan out — but coaching did.
“I never really envisioned myself coaching, but I started to see myself doing this, just because I love being around football and I love the behind-the-scenes stuff and the grind that it takes,” he said. “More importantly, I loved just to be a part of a team and to be with the guys.”
Evero joined Biggs’s staff the following season to coach the Aggies’ defensive backs before his fortuitous trip to Tampa. Evero simply went to visit his friend for a long weekend, but before leaving, Hackett gave him a tour of the Bucs’ facility. The pair ran into Kiffin, who would tap Evero to be his new defensive quality control coach.
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“It was really my first experience being part of a program where it was the only thing that mattered — the pressure that comes with the job, the expectations, the demands, all of that stuff,” Evero said. “So being with Monte and being with [Jon] Gruden — they’re successful for a reason. They’re demanding, they’re smart, they’re detailed, and they force you to kind of take that same approach.”
Evero’s stint in Tampa included the low-level grind that most quality control coaches experience, and by 2009 he started thinking about his next step. The Bucs gave him an ultimatum, as he recalls it. He had a deadline to re-sign with them, or he had to walk — with or without a new job in hand.
“I just kind of rolled the dice, and it did not work out for me,” Evero said. “I couldn’t really find any other jobs in Division I or in the NFL. So I moved back home."
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He caught on with the University of Redlands, a Division III school in Southern California, coaching special teams and biding his time.
“I was supposed to only go help out for the spring,” he said, “and ended up staying for a season.”
A year later, he was back in the NFL, joining Jim Harbaugh’s San Francisco 49ers staff, spending a season focused on special teams before shifting to offense to work with a receiving corps that featured Michael Crabtree and Randy Moss, along with tight end Vernon Davis.
“Sometimes the best way you learn is just by listening to players because they’re the ones out there doing it,” Evero said. “When they can tell you what they see, why they do things or why they react certain ways, it helps you get better.”
His first year as offensive assistant, in 2012, the 49ers went to Super Bowl XLVII. By 2014, he was back on defense, assisting coordinator Vic Fangio with the outside linebackers.
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He was charged with creating weekly tests for his players, to gauge how well they understood and retained the game plan. So he came up with the questions, graded them and then turned over the results to Fangio before games. Before one game, Evero decided to get in a quick workout and returned to the locker room to find a fuming Fangio, who was expecting the tests hours earlier. He banked that as a reminder that players and coaches alike face expectations in the NFL.
Evero considers Fangio a mentor and one of his important teachers along his coaching journey. Capers, with whom he spent the 2016 season in Green Bay, was another and one Evero remembers as “uber-detailed and organized.” The year was another grind but one that saw the Packers win their final six regular season games and reach the NFC championship game.
By 2017, he was reunited with McVay. The two had been low-level assistants with the Bucs in 2008, and they had grown close in their lone season together on Gruden’s staff.
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“When he was in Green Bay, I knew that I wanted to get a chance to work with him, and I thought he was really ready to take that next step of being a positional coach,” McVay said.
“Watching his presence in front of the group, watching his communication, his capacity for the game, not only defensively but offensively, how demanding he is of his players but in the right way,” McVay continued. “It’s demanding, never demeaning, how he gets the best out of those guys.”
In five years with L.A., Evero has gone from coaching the safeties to the full secondary, with the added title of passing game coordinator. This weekend, he’ll lead the Rams’ talented group of defensive backs one last time before expanding his duties and reuniting with an old friend in Denver.
“It’s never easy with DBs, I can tell you that,” said Rams safety Eric Weddle, who came out of retirement late in the season. “We are the ones that require the most attention in a sense. We have a talented young group that has really come together at the end of the season, and you’ve got to point to the secondary coach for that.”
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