Richard Hightower

Richard Hightower (born September 15, 1980) is an American football coach currently serving as special teams coordinator of the Chicago Bears of the National Football League (NFL).

His father, Richard, Sr. was a diesel mechanic and his mother Carolyn, was a medical tech at a blood bank.

He played quarterback in middle school and in high school moved to defensive back and wide receiver because his coaches thought he was too short to play quarterback.

College football career
Hightower went to the University of Texas on an academic scholarship and played college football as a walk-on wide receiver/special teams player, but he played on the kick coverage team. There he met fellow walk-on Kyle Shanahan. He played in every game in his sophomore and junior years. As a senior in 2002, after years of being a walk on, in front of the entire team, coach Mack Brown awarded Hightower, Shananhan and fellow special teams standout Michael Ungar with scholarships. He did not see much playing time, but in 2001 he did recover a fumble against Texas Tech. Following his senior season, then-head coach Mack Brown and his staff voted Hightower the D. Harold Byrd Leadership Award winner.

After graduating with a marketing degree in 2003, Hightower went to work for the same company he'd interned with since high school, Link Staffing. But he was drawn to football, so he went to the Houston Texans and was hired as a marketing intern. He interned for 8 months and then got a full-time marketing job which he performed for a year.

Coaching career
Hightower's NFL coaching career has been closely tied to that of friend and former teammate Kyle Shanahan. In 2006, the Texans hire Gary Kubiak as head coach. Kubiak, who'd coached under Mike Shanahan at Denver hired his son, Kyle Shanahan as his wide receivers coach. Hightower was hired as a coaching assistant, the entry-level job for NFL coaches, and then later became a special teams assistant. In 2009 he went the University of Minnesota to coach wide receivers under former Broncos assistant Tim Brewster. When Shanahan went to Washington in 2010 to join his father Mike Shanahan and to be the Redskins offensive coordinator, Hightower went too as an Assistant Special Teams coach and from 2012-13 served in that role and as a defensive back coach. The Redskins fired the coaching staff and Kyle Shanahan and was hired by the Cleveland Browns as the offensive coordinator bringing Hightower with him as the offensive quality control coach. In 2015, Shanahan left for the Atlanta Falcons and Hightower went to the San Francisco 49ers to work for new head coach Jim Tomsula as an Assistant special teams coach. When Tomsula and his staff was fired at the end of the season, Hightower was hired by the Chicago Bears for the 2016 season. On February 17, 2017 he was reunited with Shanahan and the San Francisco 49ers and promoted to a coordinator as the special teams coordinator. He stayed in San Francisco for five years, helping them make the playoffs twice and with them went to Super Bowl LIV. Following the 2021 season he was hired by the Chicago Bears on February 6, 2022 as the special teams coordinator.

In 2023, Hightower was the head coach of the East team in the 2024 East-West Shrine game, which was won by the West.