ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — Not to say NFL teams are desperate to find the secret sauce, but the Broncos finally have one good year and suddenly Detroit, Chicago, New York, Las Vegas and maybe Seattle, wants to interview and hire Denver’s coaching and personnel assistants.
In a semi-surprise, the Broncos lost tight ends coach Declan Doyle to the Chicago Bears, who hired him Sunday to be the new offensive coordinator for new head coach Ben Johnson.
The surprise aspect is Doyle is relatively inexperienced. He graduated from the University of Iowa in 2018, then became an entry-level offensive assistant for Sean Payton in New Orleans in 2019. When Payton became the Broncos’ head coach in 2023, he gave Doyle a big promotion to tight ends coach.
Now, Johnson is hiring Doyle for a major coaching position. Where it’s not a complete surprise is Johnson will be in charge of the Bears’ offense and play caller so Doyle isn’t an offensive coordinator the way Kellen Moore for Philadelphia or Joe Brady for Buffalo. Still, Doyle’s responsibilities will increase considerably.
Elsewhere, Broncos’ pass game coordinator Johnny Morton has interviewed for the Detroit Lions’ head coaching position; and special teams assistant Chris Banjo has drawn interest from the 49ers, Cowboys and Jets for their special teams coordinator positions.
With former Broncos’ personnel executives Darren Mougey and John Spytek now getting general manager positions with the New York Jets and Las Vegas Raiders, respectively, expect Denver to receive many more permission slips to interview some of its personnel assistants.
Additionally, former Broncos’ quarterback coach Klint Kubiak is now the Seattle Seahawks new offensive coordinator and he could be looking at some Broncos’ lower-level coaching assistants to come help him.
It appears Payton and Broncos’ general manager George Paton will in turn be interviewing to fill their own vacancies in the coming weeks.