Apparently, Denver Broncos CEO Greg Penner is a much more patient man than he claims. Penner, who is heading up the search committee to find the next head coach of the Denver Broncos, claimed he tends to be “impatient” at his press conference after the team fired first-year head coach Nathaniel Hackett, although his sentiment of impatience — at the time — wasn’t specifically directed at Hackett.
It was more general, which certainly resonated with a lot of Broncos fans who expected the two weeks the team had at the end of the regular season to give everyone a leg up on the process of finding and hiring the next head coach of the team. The Broncos had initially put together a list of six candidates to interview which expanded to eight when the team surprisingly added Jim Caldwell and David Shaw to its list of potential coaches.
Since the team’s head coach search began, updates and actual news regarding the search have been like a mirage in the desert. The Twitterverse is calling the news updates regarding the search “nothing burgers”.
And frankly, that’s what the latest rumors and reports have been. Nothing overly substantial. It’s all become quite confusing when you lay it all out there.
Denver Broncos head coach search can only be assumed deliberate
Most recently, it seemed like the Denver Broncos were zeroing in on San Francisco 49ers defensive coordinator DeMeco Ryans. Only if you look at the semantics of the report about Ryans, it looks like he emerged as “a” top candidate, not “the” top candidate. There’s a big difference. Now, it sounds like Ryans is all but named the next head coach of the Houston Texans.
If you go back a little further in time, you’ll find rumors that the Broncos had Sean Payton and Jim Harbaugh as co-favorites heading into this process, along with Dan Quinn as a fallback option in case those guys didn’t take the job.
Dan Quinn has now passed up on all available jobs and is returning to the Cowboys for another season. What? I thought he was one candidate the Broncos were taking a “big swing” on.
It seemed like Jim Harbaugh pulled his name out of the running as the Broncos’ next head coach, yet he hasn’t signed any sort of extension or new deal at Michigan. What gives?
It seemed like Sean Payton had warmed to the idea of working with Russell Wilson, that he loved the meeting with Broncos ownership, and was apparently slated to fly to Denver Wednesday or Thursday this past week…until he wasn’t. If he ever was.
We’ve had rumors of owner Rob Walton being gone on a hunting trip delaying the Broncos’ interview process. We’ve had reports of David Shaw emerging as a “sleeper” in the process. We’ve heard that the Broncos are going to swing big, and could be prepared to pay upwards of $25 million per year to secure the head coach they want.
Up to this point, it’s all just been talk. The only substantial news we have at this point is the fact that the team has had interviews with the following candidates:
- Jim Harbaugh
- Ejiro Evero
- David Shaw
- Jim Caldwell
- DeMeco Ryans
- Dan Quinn
- Sean Payton
- Raheem Morris
A potential “mystery” candidate has also been thrown into the mix. There have been very few updates on how interviews with certain candidates have gone, but we’ve heard everything from someone like Sean Payton loving his time with ownership to him having fear over a power struggle with someone in the ownership group.
What’s become clear through all of this is that nobody really knows anything, but not everything is still on the table for the Broncos.
Dan Quinn dropped out of the race. The team could have scheduled second interviews with most all of these candidates at this point, but they haven’t. They’ve been impressed with at least half of the options, if that’s even true. There is just no way of knowing right now what to believe, who’s truly in, and who’s truly out of the running.
The optics, based on the silence coming from the Broncos camp, seem to be that the team is going to have to “settle” for one of the candidates they didn’t really want. But is that going to be the case? Isn’t it more likely that this ownership group has something up its sleeve, given the way things ended with Nathaniel Hackett?
That’s the hope we are clinging to in Broncos Country, at least.