The Denver Broncos have announced plans to interview six different prospective head coaching candidates, and after examining the three heavy favorites last week, it’s time to take a look at the rest of the crop.
What could these coaches bring to Denver, why should the Broncos hire them, and what aspects of their résumés are concerning? Let’s look.
Ejiro Evero, Defensive Coordinator, Denver Broncos (+2000)
The biggest longshot to get the job on the Denver Broncos’ interview list, according to Oddschecker, is defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero, with +2000 odds, which is surprising considering what he’s provided the franchise with just this season.
As the Broncos moved off of Vic Fangio, everyone understandably expected the defense to regress, but instead, it improved.
In Fangio’s last season, the team ranked 20th in defensive DVOA, as the squad struggled to get off the field, as they ranked 20th in yards allowed per drive and 29th in plays allowed per drive. With Evero in charge, the defense ranked 10th in DVOA, and stifled offenses at an elite level, allowing the second-fewest yards per drive and the fourth-fewest plays per drive.
The positive transformation Evero brought to the defense goes far beyond the stat sheet though.
He brought a more modern approach and was a lot more willing to dial up the heat and stray from the old tenants of the Fangio-style defense. His usage of penny personnel consistently opened up opportunities for the Broncos’ pass rushers and helped push forward the adoption of the defensive package leaguewide.
He’s also beloved by the players.
Before he even coached a snap for the Denver Broncos, P.J. Locke gushed about how Evero’s willingness to put that weight of changing defensive vernacular on himself, instead of on the defensive players, was incredibly valuable and helped the Broncos play fast right out of the gates.
“Anytime Justin [Simmons] and KJack (Kareem Jackson) feels like something should be run a certain type of way, or [use a certain kind of] terminology … Coach E (Defensive Coordinator Ejiro Evero) is such a player’s coach that some of the terminology we used last year, he was ok with using it this year, and putting the learning curve on him instead of us.,” P.J. Locke, a safety entering his third season in Denver, said, during an exclusive interview with Mile High Sports’ Let’s Talk Broncos Podcast. “So stuff like that, it just goes a long way. It goes longer than [Evero] even thinks, ’cause that’s just one less thing that we have to worry about.”
Simmons continued to heap praise on Evero in recent weeks when asked about the coordinator’s head coaching candidacy.
“He’s one of the best leaders I’ve been around,” Simmons said on December 28th. “I think it speaks volumes to the testament of — obviously you can’t take away last week’s game (the 51-14 loss to the Rams) — but, minus that game, the way that the defense has answered the bell. And, obviously, there’s tremendous talent player-wise on the defense, but I always think that speaks volumes to a leadership standpoint — the way your guys respond to some adversity, and I felt most of the year, all year, for the most part, guys have responded in a really positive manner. And I think that’s because of Coach E (Ejiro Evero). Like I said, I think he’s one of the brightest minds I’ve been around and one of the best leaders, so I think he’d obviously be at the top of the list for [head coaching jobs.]”
Simmons had even more kind words after the Denver Broncos’ season finale.
“Selfishly, I’d love to be with Coach E, whatever that looks like: Head coach, back as the D-coordinator,” Justin Simmons said following the season finale. “He’s helped my game so much this year.”
Now, there are some concerns with Evero, despite the numerous positives.
For starters, the problems on the Denver Broncos coaching staff were deeper than Nathaniel Hackett, Butch Barry, and Dwayne Stukes. There are more problems that need to be addressed there. With how much of a mess this season was, more of a house-cleaning, rather than a re-instilling of the status quo, might be ideal.
Evero’s defense also declined dramatically this season following the trade of Bradley Chubb. It’s definitely understandable that the defense would decline considering all the injuries and losses they suffered, but still, it is somewhat concerning how much the defense degraded down the stretch.
Lastly, is Evero’s relative lack of experience. He’s only been a coordinator for one season, making him the least experienced candidate on the interview list so far, and, considering the Denver Broncos’ desire for an experienced head coach, that’s a notable concern.
Overall, Evero is a very strong candidate, but Broncos Country might desire someone with more experience and might just want to cleanse their palate of the Nathaniel Hackett era entirely.
Raheem Morris, Defensive Coordinator, Los Angeles Rams (+1000)
Since taking over for Brandon Staley as the defensive coordinator of the Los Angeles Rams, Raheem Morris has become one of the hottest prospective head coaching names in the NFL.
Some of the traits that leap out as ‘most appealing’ with Raheem Morris are his adaptability in finding new solutions, his player-friendly yet disciplined approach and his experience as an NFL head coach.
The defense Raheem Morris ran when he was the head coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers is very different from the defense he oversaw in Atlanta while working with Dan Quinn’s Falcons. And both of those defenses are quite different from the style of defense he’s run in Los Angeles.
He’s shown a natural ability to adapt his scheme to the roster talent and is often able to also maximize said roster talent.
While in Atlanta, he took over as interim head coach and defensive play-caller following the dismissal of Dan Quinn, and immediately improved Atlanta’s defense to being an above-average squad (per DVOA). It was the only season during the ‘Dan Quinn’ era that a Falcons defense was above-average in the eyes of DVOA, and Morris was responsible.
Then, upon arriving in Los Angeles, he took over the top defense in football, and still found some ways to tinker and improve upon the product, helping the Rams to capture a Super Bowl. In order to create isolated matchups for Aaron Donald, Von Miller, and the rest of Los Angeles’ stellar front, Raheem Morris became an early adopter of penny personnel and utilized it to great success.
One would have to assume that experience helped motivate Evero to use penny looks so much this season.
Morris also has a lot of experience as a head coach and has been praised widely for his ability to relate to players, without going overboard, a la Coach Hackett.
“He’s going to be a head coach again—no question about it,” McVay said in an interview with Andscape. “He’s such a special leader, such a special coach. And when you think about the things that a great head coach does—has command over the game, command over a room, the ability to connect with a bunch of different people—Raheem does all of that. He just has great ability to lead, teach, motivate, inspire. He checks every single one of those boxes.”
Finally is the fact that he’s already done it before, which, after the failures of Vance Joseph, Vic Fangio, and Nathaniel Hackett, is likely to be a top desire for the Denver Broncos during their search.
Now, Morris’s 17-31 record in Tampa won’t wow anyone, but that failed experiment was over a decade ago, and it did feature some real positives, such as a 10-6 record in year two, which was comfortably the best Buccaneer season between 2005 and the signing of Tom Brady.
The big knocks on him will likely be how ineffective his stint in Tampa was, for the most part, and that he’s never been able to fully recapture Staley’s defensive magic in Los Angeles. Under Morris’ watch, the defense declined from being the league’s top unit to being the league’s 18th-best defense by the end of his second season. Also, the fact that Staley has struggled to recreate his defensive success without the help of Jalen Ramsey and Aaron Donald hurts Morris’s case.
Overall, Morris looks the part of a creative problem-solver who knows how to run an NFL locker room, but his Rams’ defenses have experienced a bit of a decline, despite possessing some All-World talent.
DeMeco Ryans, Defensive Coordinator, San Francisco 49ers (+750)
DeMeco Ryans has been one of the hottest up-and-coming coaches since the last hiring cycle, so it’s no surprise that he’s already made the Denver Broncos’ short list of candidates.
Ryans started in coaching in 2017 under Kyle Shanahan as a defensive quality control coach, soon after his playing career, and quickly flew through the coaching ranks thanks to his defensive genius, masterful coaching ability, and infectious personality.
If one were to pitch Broncos Country on DeMeco Ryans, a quick and easy pitch would be, “He’s everything you liked about Vic Fangio, with none of the stuff you didn’t.”
Defensive expertise, and the ability to give you a weekly schematic advantage on one side of the ball? He’s got it in spades. An amazing resume of player development? Check that one off too.
A curmudgeonly nature that frustrates certain players? Not even close.
Earlier this season, 49ers general manager John Lynch was effusive in his praise of DeMeco Ryans as a coach.
“DeMeco’s been tremendous. He really has,” Lynch told KNBR’s Markus Boucher and Marcus Thompson. “As good of a football coach as Robert Saleh was. You thought it was going to be really tough to replace him. We had a ton of confidence in DeMeco, but you just don’t know until you see him out there in that capacity, and DeMeco just continued to get better and better. I think he’s so respected. If you’re around him, he just has a presence to him. He still looks like he could play, and so he commands a respect from the guys. But I think, most of all, it’s just his consistency. Man, he’s a stud. And he’s extremely bright. He rallies those guys.”
On top of his defensive genius and lauded affability, Ryans boasts an impressive track record of success, and could potentially put together a very appealing staff.
Under Ryans, the 49ers ranked seventh in defensive DVOA a season ago, and rank first this season by a comfortable margin. He also has connections all throughout the Shanahan tree, including to best-in-the-business defensive line coach Kris Kocurek, making his staff potentially tantalizing as well.
For all his positives though, Ryans does have one glaring negative — his extreme lack of experience.
Ryans has only been in the world of coaching for six years, and only five of those years have been spent with a higher rank than ‘quality control coach’. For comparison’s sake, of the other five coaches on the Denver Broncos’ interview list, only Ejiro Evero (seven years) has less than 20 years of such experience. But in the case of Evero, he still has spent three times as many years (18) in the coaching profession as Ryans (six).
Overall, Ryans is a near-perfect candidate who might ultimately be overlooked considering his lack of experience and Denver’s recent track record at selecting a head coach.
