Denver Broncos 2023 Head Coaching Search

[Mingo]

If that’s what Cow Herd thinks, it’s guaranteed to be wrong.

It's all about having won with a short QB - as you know - all short QBs are alike.

 

[PumpFake]

It's all about having won with a short QB - as you know - all short QBs are alike.

Let's draft Stetson Bennett!

 

[SpringStein]

It's all about having won with a short QB - as you know - all short QBs are alike.

Yes, like Paxton Lynch was going to be like every other successful tall QB.

(Will you remind me what 6’7” QB has had great success? I’m getting old and I’m sure I forget.)

 

[Mingo]

Yes, like Paxton Lynch was going to be like every other successful tall QB.

(Will you remind me what 6’7” QB has had great success? I’m getting old and I’m sure I forget.)

Roman Gabriel - Steve Grogan - Drew Bledsoe

 

[PumpFake]

Roman Gabriel - Steve Grogan - Drew Bledsoe

If you’re going with the 6’5ers you better include PFM!

 

[Draft Crazy]

You can't talk about tall QB's without mentioning Dan McGwire.

 

[SpringStein]

Super Bowl rings galore!

 

[PumpFake]

Ryans? How many draft picks for this guy?

DeMeco Ryans’ second year as coordinator has been a boon for him and the 49ers​

Matt Barrows
Jan 20, 2023
12
SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Johnny Holland remembers sitting across from DeMeco Ryans at a small table at the 2006 NFL Scouting Combine and asking the then 21-year-old whom he considered the best linebacker on Alabama’s defense.
Holland, who was entering his 12th season as an NFL assistant and his first with the Texans, already knew the answer. Ryans, after all, had recently been voted the SEC’s Defensive Player of the Year. Still, the young linebacker didn’t tout himself like so many prospects do before the draft and instead spent the session pumping up friend and fellow linebacker Freddie Roach.
“To me, that was a reflection of a true leader — that he would lift up the other guys around him before he would lift himself up,” Holland said. “He knew that he was 100 percent the better linebacker. He wanted me to recognize the other linebacker so he could get drafted.”
Holland liked Ryans heading into that meeting. He loved him coming out, and he spent the next two months urging the Houston brass to take Ryans with the top pick in the second round.
He got his wish — there was a lot of lobbying involved — then watched as his rookie linebacker exceeded even Holland’s rosiest predictions. Seventeen years later, Holland has gone from coaching Ryans in Houston to working under him in San Francisco, and he’s certain the same traits that made him an instant star in Houston — attention to detail, selflessness, the ability to raise those around him — will make him an excellent head coach.
“He’s a listener — he’ll listen to any knowledge that he can pick up,” Holland said. “And when I say anybody, that means he’ll listen to players, he’ll listen to the janitor. He’ll listen to anybody to pick up knowledge. To me, that’s what separates him from a lot of people.”
Ryans had a shot at a head coach position a year ago but declined a second interview with the Vikings, a surprise to the 49ers who figured he was on the fast track to a top job. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Minnesota or had second thoughts about being a head coach. That’s been squarely in his sights since he arrived in San Francisco as an entry level assistant in 2017.
It was that he felt he had more to gain as a defensive coordinator. And he knew that when he did, more opportunities would follow.
He was right. Last year he had one main suitor. This year, all five teams with head coach openings want to talk. Ryans met Thursday evening with Broncosofficials, who flew to the Bay Area for the interview. He also will meet with the Texans, Colts and Cardinals in coming days — some will be in person, some will be virtual — and the Panthers also have requested an interview.
“With everything you do as a coach, you’re trying to crunch a lot of things in,” Ryans said of juggling interviews and preparing for the Cowboys on Sunday. “I know how to make the main thing the main thing, and the main thing this week is the Cowboys.”

 

[PumpFake]

Fred Warner, right, has been impressed with DeMeco Ryans’ attention to detail throughout the week. (Thearon W. Henderson / Getty Images)
The attention he’s getting underscores that his second season as San Francisco’s defensive coordinator has been a boon for him and the 49ers.
It wasn’t as if his defense struggled in 2021. In last year’s playoff opener, for example, the 49ers hit Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott 14 times, intercepted him once and forced a Prescott fumble, and they did so despite playing without their two best players, Nick Bosa and Fred Warner, for the final nine minutes. A week later in Green Bay, they held Aaron Rodgers and the Packers to 10 points, albeit with a big assist from Old Man Winter.
This season’s defense has been decidedly better. The 49ers led the NFL in yards and points allowed during the regular season. They’ve played 18 games and no opposing runner has surpassed 100 yards or even come close. Raiders running back Josh Jacobs had the highest total, 69 yards, in Week 17. To put that in perspective, Jacobs was the league’s leading rusher and he surpassed 69 yards nine times in 2022 and topped 100 yards six times.
Jimmie Ward, the 49ers’ longest-tenured player, said he thought the biggest indicator of progress was interceptions, which jumped from nine to 20 and which tied the Steelers for the league lead.
“It’s always about trying to correct stuff from a year ago,” Ward said. “And we’re getting more takeaways and not giving up as many busts. He knew if we could clean that up, that would make our defense that much better.”
The 49ers said they can hear the improvement in their headsets. That is, there’s been a sense this season that Ryans knows what the offense is about to do, which has allowed his defenders to be the aggressors when the ball is snapped.
“It’s pretty cool to hear him,” said Warner, the team’s middle linebacker and the player who relays Ryans’ play calls to the rest of the defense. “Sometimes he’ll be telling me, ‘This will be a run’ or, ‘They’re doing this on this play.’ You can tell he’s obviously very dialed in during the week in his preparation and knowing exactly what the offense is going to run.”
Defensive lineman Kerry Hyder Jr. noted that every defensive coordinator wants his players to be as aggressive as possible. Robert Saleh, who ran the 49ers’ defense from 2017 to 2020, had a motto to that effect: All gas, no brake. Ryans’ mantra is SWARM, which stands for Special Work Ethic and Relentless Mindset. Hyder, who’s played under six different coordinators, said those are mere words and slogans unless the players believe they are being placed in the right positions. Only then can a defense reach its top speed and truly swarm.

GO DEEPER
49ers' DeMeco Ryans showed leadership at an early age
“I feel like that happens more often than not,” Hyder said. “We’re never guessing.”
Other players pointed to Ryans’ leadership. When he was a kid, his baseball coaches had him play catcher and his football coaches put him at center. Neither seem like spots suited for someone who was lanky and athletic like Ryans was at the time. But there was a common element — Ryans’ calm demeanor was a stabilizing force at both positions. For Ryans, leading comes naturally.
“I think he’s really figured out how to perfectly push us but not push us too hard and not give us too much credit,” said Bosa, who called Ryans the best defensive coordinator he’s ever had.
Said linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair: “We always talk about, ‘love is stronger than fear.’ And I feel when you have that type of love for your coach, for each other, you take things that much more personally because you know how much he cares. You want to do well for him.”
The comments are echoes of what Texans coaches — including Holland and a first-year wide receivers coach named Kyle Shanahan — witnessed when Ryans was drafted in 2006.
The rookie sat in the front row and took detailed notes. He asked questions. He made sure his teammates kept the locker room and meeting rooms tidy. He was quiet until he needed to speak up, and when he did everyone — young players and veterans alike — snapped to attention. And he always seemed to be a step ahead, finishing second in the NFL with 156 tackles and winning Defensive Rookie of the Year.
“They used to call him Cap — for captain. And he was a rookie,” Holland said. “The veteran players would call him that. It was, ‘Go talk to Cap out there to see how he’s going to handle this.’”


DeMeco Ryans had a veteran-like presence even as a rookie for the Texans. (Lisa Blumenfeld / Getty Images)
Quarterback Matt Schaub remembers arriving in 2007 and jousting with Ryans, the quarterback of the defense, during practices and then dissecting those sessions with him afterward. Schaub took great pride in his ball fakes and Ryans would let him know whenever he caught a glimpse of the ball behind his back. Schaub, in turn, would tell Ryans if he was tipping off a blitz through the A gap.
Every so often the television cameras will catch something during 49ers games that’s familiar to Schaub and other former Texans — a broad, toothy grin that lights up Ryans’ face. It’s something that appears when the 49ers’ defense is at full swarm.
“And it’s fun to see now because it’s just authentic, it’s pure, it’s him,” Schaub said. “I loved seeing it in practice because it meant we were having fun and we were just playing ball. I liked it even better when it was on Sunday and he was coming off the field and we were going on the field offensively.”
After their meeting at the 2006 Combine, Holland went back to Houston and created a 25-play highlight reel he showed to head coach Gary Kubiak and anyone else who passed by his office. He was obsessed with the Alabama linebacker but worried he wouldn’t be able to land him. That was heightened after the Texans shocked everyone when it was their turn to make the first overall pick. The conventional wisdom was that they’d select either USC running back Reggie Bush or Texas quarterback Vince Young. Instead, they chose Mario Williams, a defensive end from N.C. State.
Holland thought there was no way the Texans would take another defensive player when it was their turn to pick again in Round 2. After all, they had a new coach, Kubiak, with an offensive background. And they’d finished 30th in offense the previous season and had given up an astounding 68 sacks.
Charley Casserly, the general manager at the time, agreed that offensive tackle was the greater need in 2006. But Ryans was the highest rated player on their draft board when the second round began and they decided to take him at that spot. They ended up drafting a pair of tackles, Charles Spencer and Eric Winston, in the third round.
“It was the perfect example of why you take the best player and not the need,” Casserly said in a phone interview.
Holland remembers Ryans stepping to the podium that day in a sharp, blue suit and handling himself like he was an eight-year veteran. It wasn’t long after that when Holland and many other observers began noting that Ryans had all the makings of a future NFL head coach.
Said Holland: “He’s the most polished guy — as a human and as a player and as a leader — that I’ve been around in my 35 years of being around the game.”

 

[Orange Crush77]

Broncos have a ‘sleeper candidate’ for head coach opening

It sounds like David Shaw is a dark horse candidate for the Broncos' head coach opening.

www.yahoo.com

Thats POTM material right there. You're welcome

 

[nflbronco]

I think the two hires that will have the most heat day 1 is Quinn and Shaw. I get the vibe that both aren't well received in Broncos Country. I know fans are impatient with all of them but, those two seem the leaders.

 

[Broncosr0k]

Given the draft pick(s) we would need to get Payton and everyone telling me he would guarantee us playoffs in year 1, he is the one that needs to show up for me.

 

[Orange Crush77]

After thinking about it, Payton or bust for me. He will help stabilize this team who seemed to lose its morale, and more importantly will be more attractive for possible free agents, which we need. This team was a laughingstock last season, we need a full 180 on that mojo

 

[PumpFake]

After thinking about it, I’m no longer kidding about flipping Rosberg the keys.

Denver Broncos to 'Consider' Interim Jerry Rosburg as Permanent Head Coach - Sports Illustrated Mile High Huddle: Denver Broncos News, Analysis and More

Could this be the true darkhorse for the Denver Broncos head-coaching vacancy?

www.si.com

 

[Duffman]

After thinking about it, I’m no longer kidding about flipping Rosberg the keys.

Denver Broncos to 'Consider' Interim Jerry Rosburg as Permanent Head Coach - Sports Illustrated Mile High Huddle: Denver Broncos News, Analysis and More

Could this be the true darkhorse for the Denver Broncos head-coaching vacancy?

www.si.com

I see him as a backup plan if we don’t get Payton or Quinn.

 

[LGM]

I see him as a backup plan if we don’t get Payton or Quinn.

Or my blind grandma, Or Springer, or Mingo, or my dog...

 

[PumpFake]

Or my blind grandma, Or Springer, or Mingo, or my dog...

Springer coaching tree roots are epic. His staff would be a veritable list of who’s who of who’s who.

 

[LGM]

Rumors on Twitter saying Payton to Denver all but a done deal.

Followed by DC noticing Payton was wearing Bronco colors on pregame today.

 

[Mingo]

At least Payton understands an effective Oline and run game.

 

[Duffman]