Broncos quarterbacks coach and pass game coordinator Davis Webb has finished an interview with the Bills for their head coaching vacancy.
The team announced the completion of the interview on Monday afternoon. It’s the first time that Webb has spoken to the Bills since they fired Sean McDermott last week and he was able to take the interview because the Broncos’ season ended with Sunday’s 10-7 loss to the Patriots.
Webb has been on Sean Payton’s staff in Denver for the last three seasons and he’s generated a lot of buzz as a head coaching candidate this month. Webb is also set for a second interview with the Raiders this week.
Webb played three seasons for the Bills as a backup to Josh Allen, who is also one of his closest friends. That would be an unusual relationship for a head coach and starting quarterback to have in the NFL, but the Bills could decide it is the right path for them to take after their latest playoff letdown.
The snow-covered field at Empower Stadium might have played a part in Wil Lutz’s missed 45-yard field goal that would have tied the AFC Championship Game in the fourth quarter.
“Unfortunately, you couldn’t see the lines on the field and honestly, I think we were — we might have been a yard short on the snap,” Lutz said after Denver’s 10-7 loss, via Jake Shapiro of 104.3 The Fan. “Can’t see the lines on the field and we had to kind of estimate, and a guy comes through, and it was blocked.”
Kicks typically come from 8 yards behind the line of scrimmage. The Broncos were at the New England 28 when Lutz attempted his 45-yard field goal with 4:46 left in the fourth quarter. Patriots defensive tackle Leonard Taylor III, a practice squad elevation, tipped the ball, and the kick sailed wide left.
“It sucks when you want to be there to help the team, and I wasn’t able to do that,” Lutz said.
Lutz also missed a 54-yard kick and didn’t get to attempt a 22-yarder in the first half when Sean Payton chose to go for it on fourth-and-1 from the New England 14, and Jarrett Stidham threw incomplete.
Three years ago, the cancellation of the Bills-Bengals game following Damar Hamlin’s on-field cardiac arrest prompted the league to handle the multi-layered competitive imbalances by deciding that a Bills-Chiefs AFC Championship would have been played at a neutral site.
If the Bills had beaten the Bengals in the divisional round, Buffalo would have faced Kansas City in Atlanta. Where 50,000 tickets had been sold in only 24 hours, based on the mere possibility of the game happening there.
The Bengals disrupted that plan by upsetting the Bills, but the plan prompted talk within the league office of potentially shifting all conference championship games to neutral sites.
Chiefs founder Lamar Hunt had pushed the idea for years; his partners consistently shot it down. And when the concept emerged three years ago, it quickly fizzled out. (Steelers owner Art Rooney II said, “I hate the idea.” Falcons owner Arthur Blank, whose domed stadium surely would be in the rotation, also opposed it.)
During the fourth quarter of Sunday’s AFC Championship, it suddenly seemed to be not such a bad idea.
That’s the balance. On one hand, the team that earns the higher seed deserves to play at home. On the other hand, the biggest games arguably should be played under conditions that prevent weather from impacting the outcome.
The Super Bowl has always been played at a neutral site. And weather is rarely an issue. (The NFL got lucky in February 2014, with the first — and only — open-air cold-climate Super Bowl in New Jersey. It got unlucky in February 2007, when it rained cats and dogs throughout Colts and Bears in Miami.)
With more teams ditching cold-weather, unroofed venues for domes (as recently noted by Sports Business Journal, the league is on track to have up to 17 teams playing indoors within the next decade, with the Chiefs, Browns, Broncos, and Bears looking to create fully-covered year-round cash cows), the chances of late-January weather impacting conference championships will be reduced. But with the Bills, Jets, Patriots, Steelers, Bengals, Giants, Eagles, Packers, Panthers, and Seahawks playing outdoors in cities that could introduce snow, ice, and/or bitter cold into the wintry mix, the prospect of weather affecting conference title games will remain — especially if/when the regular season expands and the playoffs are nudged deeper into the calendar.
Plenty of fans will huff and puff about neutral-site conference championships. And then they’ll gobble up the tickets and/or hunker down to watch the games by the tens of millions.
After Sunday, here’s the overriding question. Are we OK with staging those games in places where the conditions could make them both unplayable and unwatchable? Do we want the team that was trailing once the skies opened and the snow accumulated to have no realistic chance to come back and win?
Yes, the Broncos had a chance to tie things up late, but a field-goal attempt was tipped at the line of scrimmage. If that kick had been good, however, there’s a good chance the Patriots and Broncos would have lingered through multiple overtimes, until some fluke occurrence allowed one of the teams to score.
If that’s what we want, fine. If it’s not, maybe it’s time to revisit Lamar Hunt’s annual suggestion.
In the first 10 games of the 2025 postseason, 15 lead changes happened in the fourth quarter. It’s an all-time record.
There were no fourth-quarter lead changes in either of Sunday’s games. There were no fourth-quarter lead changes because, in both the AFC Championship and NFC Championship, there were zero fourth-quarter points scored.
None. Nothing. Zilch. Nada. The final points scored in Rams-Seahawks happened with 17 minutes remaining. In Patriots-Broncos, 20:29 remained when New England took a 10-7 lead.
That’s 37:29 of total action with no scoring to end the two games.
In Denver, it wasn’t a surprise. The weather took a turn for the treacherous, and neither offense could do anything. In Seattle, the fourth quarter consisted mainly of a long Rams drive that failed on fourth and four from the six, and a clock-churning clincher from the Seahawks that left the Rams without enough time to do much of anything.
Despite the absence of scoring, both games were exciting until the end, or close to it.
Before the AFC Championship Game got underway on Sunday, there was a report that Broncos quarterbacks coach/pass game coordinator Davis Webb was expected to have a second interview with the Raiders for their head coaching job this week.
That report also indicated that the Bills have interest in interviewing Webb, but the timing of a conversation was contingent on the result of their game against the Patriots. The Bills did not fire Sean McDermott until last week, which meant they did not have a virtual first-round interview with Webb and would have to wait to speak with him until after the Super Bowl if Denver beat New England.
The Patriots won 10-7 on Sunday and that means Webb is now free to interview with any interested teams and could be hired at any time. Per multiple reports, Webb is expected to speak with both the Bills and the Raiders on Monday.
The same is true for Rams defensive coordinator Chris Shula, offensive coordinator Mike LaFleur, and offensive pass game coordinator Nate Scheelhaase in the wake of their loss to the Seahawks. Seahawks offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak has also interviewed for head coaching vacancies and he can have second meetings this week, but no team can hire him until after Super Bowl LX.
The Cardinals and Browns join the Bills and Raiders as teams still looking for head coaches.
