This post was updated Feb. 4 at 11:22 p.m.
Another Bruin coach is departing from the program – this time to the NFL.
UCLA football associate head coach and running backs coach DeShaun Foster will join Antonio Pierce’s staff as running backs coach for the Las Vegas Raiders, NFL Network’s Mike Garafolo reported Friday afternoon. Foster is now the fifth member of the Bruins’ coaching staff to leave Westwood this offseason.
A UCLA Athletics Hall of Fame inductee in 2022, Foster started his Bruin career as a running back for the team from 1998 to 2001. Subsequently, he spent six years in the NFL with the Carolina Panthers and San Francisco 49ers before returning to UCLA in 2013 as a volunteer assistant coach.
After three years with the Bruins, Foster joined Texas Tech’s staff as running backs coach in 2016, before once again rejoining UCLA as running backs coach in 2017.
Foster was promoted to associate head coach – while retaining his position as running backs coach – following the 2022 season. In each of the past three years, UCLA’s rushing offense has placed in the top 16 nationally, and in each of the past four years, a Bruin running back has been selected in the NFL Draft.
One day prior to reports of Foster’s hiring, NFL insider Ian Rapoport reported that coach Chip Kelly was interviewed at least twice for the Raiders’ offensive coordinator job – which ultimately went to Kliff Kingsbury.
Foster joins defensive coordinator D’Anton Lynn, tight ends coach Jeff Faris, quarterbacks coach Ryan Gunderson and director of leadership Ken Niumatalolo as UCLA coaches who have assumed other positions since the end of the 2023 regular season. Niumatalolo was set to be the 2024 tight ends coach in place of Faris but will instead be San Jose State’s head coach.
While Lynn and Gunderson have both been replaced, the Bruins have to fill the holes left behind by Foster, Faris and Niumatalolo ahead of their first year in the Big Ten.
