Vance Joseph’s head coaching career came to an inglorious end with the Denver Broncos at the culmination of Week 17. In two seasons, Joseph compiled an 11-21 record with the team and burned through four different starting quarterbacks in the process. Not all of the Broncos’ lack of success was his fault, but enough of it was that general manager John Elway finally pushed the ejector button and sent Joseph hurtling into the sun.
I mean, Elway’s not going to fire himself. What he is going to do, hopefully, is fix Denver’s quarterback situation in free agency and the draft and hire a new head coach. BetDSI has tossed out some odds on just who that might be and unlike most of the other teams with vacancies, the Broncos might go defense. Take a look.
Denver Broncos head coach in Week 1 of 2019 regular season
Vic Fangio +150
Zac Taylor +250
Chuck Pagano +400
Mike Munchak +500
Brian Flores +750
Mike McCarthy +1000
One name that’s conspicuously not on the list is former Miami Dolphins head coach Adam Gase. Gase was the offensive coordinator for the Broncos for a few seasons and crafted one of the best offenses in the league in 2013 when Peyton Manning threw an NFL record 55 touchdown passes. Elway put the kabosh on any reunion talk when he told reporters last week that Gase wasn’t even on his radar.
If the Broncos do decide to go with a defensive-minded head coach, they can certainly do better than Brian Flores, who just has the single season under his belt as the defensive coordinator for the New England Patriots. Guys have landed jobs after one year as a coordinator before, specifically Mike Vrabel with the Tennessee Titans this year. But considering the Titans finished out of the playoffs after making it last season and didn’t improve on their 9-7 record, the jury is still out on if that was a good hire.
With the Broncos requesting permission to interview Brian Flores for their head-coaching vacancy, per @AdamSchefter, revisiting a 1-on-1 chat with Flores from last week on lessons as a first-year play-caller, leadership and head-coach interviews. https://t.co/k8AhjInu0U
— Mike Reiss (@MikeReiss) December 31, 2018
Chuck Pagano’s name has been tossed around with pretty much every vacancy, as is Mike McCarthy’s. While McCarthy likely will get hired somewhere this season, I don’t think Pagano will get another NFL head coaching job in his lifetime. Not on purpose. He’s not blackballed from the league due to complete ineptitude like Jeff Fisher. He’s just a guy like Jim Caldwell. Nobody’s handing him the keys ever again.
Mike Munchak makes some sense in that one of the biggest issues with the Broncos has been their offensive line play since Gary Kubiak stepped down due to health reasons. It’s hampered the offense and really hurt what was already a horrid quarterback situation.
Zac Taylor is an interesting candidate in that he’s not a coordinator at all. He’s the quarterback coach for the Los Angeles Rams. It does happen sometimes that a guy can get elevated straight from the second tier of assistants to a head coach. John Harbaugh was the special teams coordinator for the Philadelphia Eagles when he got the Baltimore Ravens job. The guy he worked for with the Eagles, Andy Reid, was the quarterback coach in Green Bay when Philly hired him as their head coach. Both those moves worked out pretty well.
GM John Elway and the Broncos have finished an interview with Rams assistant coach Zac Taylor for the team’s head coaching position.
📰 » https://t.co/yoYlsKcuwP pic.twitter.com/YfKVNmSfIs
— Denver Broncos (@Broncos) January 4, 2019
Really, Vic Fangio has the best shot out of all these candidates. He crafted one of the best defenses in the league this year with the Chicago Bears and if the Broncos want to keep a strength a strength, Fangio’s the guy. And he might end up hiring Taylor as his offensive coordinator so they could end up with both of them.
