ESPN’S Barnwell ranks Broncos coaching vacancy among NFL’s worst
Jan 6, 2023, 3:29 PM
There may only be 32 NFL head coaching jobs in the world but that does not mean they’re all incredible opportunities.
Whether it is ownership breathing down a coach’s neck, poor quarterback play or a bad general manager, some NFL head coaches are just set up to fail. According to a Friday column from ESPN’s Bill Barnwell the person who takes the Broncos job is more likely to fail than succeed based on the situation in Denver. And that coaching candidates should have better options than the Broncos.
To be precise Barnwell ranks the Broncos vacancy sixth out of the seven most-likely openings around the league. He wrote that despite young talent and a possible long-term quarterback, the negatives of bad draft capital, a great division and a very expensive quarterback outweighs the positives.
So, if someone’s taking this job, they know they have to get Wilson back on track. For some coaches, that will be a non-starter. For others, it will be an opportunity. As I wrote about earlier this month, Wilson was still great as recently as last December. Quarterbacks who have declined as suddenly as Wilson did this season have improved, although it’s no guarantee. This will be a self-fulfilling prophecy: The coaches the Broncos will interview will tell them what they want to hear, so anyone who takes this job is going to think they can fix Wilson. Absent any alternatives, general manager George Paton and the front office will have no choice but to believe they can pull it off…
This is a very different sort of job than the other ones available this offseason. The Texans need someone to build them a house. The Broncos need to someone to put out a house that’s on fire. The firefighter the Broncos hire and what they do to salvage Wilson will be one of the most fascinating stories of next season.
Barnwell thinks the Colts gig is worst than the Broncos one. He ranks the Panthers job as the best followed by the Saints and Texans.
What’s interesting here is Denver’s job might not be set up to succeed right away but if a star candidate was promised patience from ownership they might still take the gig. The Broncos ownership group could in theory pay way more than any other team since they have the deepest coffers in the league.
So even if the Broncos job is understood around the league as not a good one that doesn’t necessarily rule them out of the Sean Payton or Jim Harbaugh sweepstakes. In truth, there’s a reason why these seven jobs will be open and that’s because the person before failed. None of these jobs are great, some are just less bad than the others… and a lot of money and a nice place to live could make that easier to swallow.
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