Niners hire Raye to run offense

Raye agreed to terms with the 49ers on Friday to become the club's seventh offensive coordinator in seven seasons.

The 62-year-old coaching veteran is a somewhat unlikely choice for the 49ers, who needed a full month to fill the vacancy created when coach Mike Singletary fired Mike Martz on Dec. 30 in his first major act after getting the permanent job running the club.

Singletary, who went 5-4 as an interim coach to finish the 49ers' sixth consecutive losing season, wanted a veteran coordinator who would build his game plans around a sustained running attack. He apparently found what he wanted in Raye, the eighth man to interview for the job last week.

"It certainly took longer than we would have liked it to, but sometimes good things come to those who wait," Singletary said. "The thing I didn't want to do was go ahead and make a knee-jerk decision and select someone before I thought we had our guy."

Singletary also hired former Baltimore Ravens assistant Mike Johnson as the 49ers' new quarterbacks coach.

During more than three decades of NFL coaching experience, Raye has been a coordinator with the Los Angeles Rams, Tampa Bay, New England, Kansas City, Washington and Oakland, where he also was the Raiders' assistant head coach in 2004-05 under Norv Turner. He spent the last three seasons as the New York Jets' running backs coach under Eric Mangini.

Raye fits Singletary's desire for a coordinator who emphasizes the running game. He was the Rams' coordinator in 1984 when Eric Dickerson rushed for a league-record 2,105 yards.

Despite their mutual decades of NFL experience, Singletary and Raye hadn't even met until the Jets' trip to San Francisco last month to face the 49ers. Raye admired San Francisco quarterback Shaun Hill's dissection of New York's defense that day, but never imagined he might be joining Singletary until they initially spoke on the phone several weeks ago.

"We had a shared vision of how you play the game and what we would like to see when the game is played," Raye said. "His passion for football is kind of contagious. That started the mutual understanding between the two of us."