The Broncos are expected to re-hire outside linebackers coach Michael Wilhoite as a member of the staff, Matt Zenitz of CBS Sports reports.
The team fired Wilhoite in March 2025 after his arrest on suspicion of second-degree assault of a police officer, misdemeanor obstruction of a police officer and misdemeanor criminal mischief. But all charges were dismissed on June 8, 2026.
Wilhoite still faces a civil lawsuit, filed by Denver police officer Jesus Galvan Chavez, who Wilhoite allegedly punched in the face at a drop-off traffic zone at Denver International Airport on Feb. 23, 2025.
Wilhoite joined the team’s staff as outside linebackers coach in 2023 after the Chargers fired him.
Broncos Clips
Even at 84, Hall of Fame head coach Bill Parcells continues to stay connected to the game.
As recently noted by the folks at JoeBucsFan.com, Parcells said in an interview last month with Sal Licata that Parcells continues to watch two NFL teams closely.
“With Sean [Payton’s] team, Todd Bowles, the Tampa Bay coach, I try to,” Parcells said. “Because I know I’m going to talk to them the next week.”
Both Payton and Bowles worked for Parcells before becoming head coaches.
The fact that Payton (who coaches the Broncos after a long tenure with the Saints) and Bowles (who coached the Jets before become the Buccaneers’ coach) keep in regular touch with Parcells shows that Parcells has plenty of advice to give — and that they’re more than willing to take it.
Parcells coached four NFL teams over 19 seasons, leading the Giants to two Super Bowl wins and took the Patriots to the Super Bowl. He got the Jets to the AFC Championship in his second season. In 2013, Parcells was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Veteran cornerback Levi Wallace did not play in the NFL after landing on Jacksonville’s injured reserve list last summer and he won’t be coming back to the field in 2026.
Wallace announced his retirement on Instagram on Friday. Wallace noted that he was undrafted in 2018 and went on to spend eight years in the league, which he termed a “not bad” run in the league.
Wallace signed with the Bills after playing at Alabama and started all 57 regular season and playoff games he played in four seasons with Buffalo. He spent the next two seasons with the Steelers and saw his final game action with the Broncos in 2024.
Wallace had 333 tackles, 12 interceptions, 30 passes defensed and a fumble recovery in 96 career regular season games. He also had 23 tackles, an interception and a sack in six postseason outings.
When it comes to the NFL’s effort to send the Brian Flores case to arbitration, it’s apparently not over until the NFL says it’s over.
Regardless, the presiding judge has now made it abundantly clear that it’s over.
Despite a court ruling and an appeals court ruling that the claims brought by Brian Flores (against the Dolphins, Giants, Broncos, and Texans), Ray Horton (against the Titans), and Steve Wilks (against the Cardinals) must be decided in court, the NFL filed a motion to reconsider the ruling that slammed the door on arbitration.
On Wednesday, Judge Valerie Caproni denied the NFL’s latest motion.
The 15-page ruling begins with an expression of exasperation regarding the nearly four-and-a-half-year-old litigation: “This case continues to linger at the starting block. Or, to use a more fitting metaphor, this case continues to linger as the teams mill about in the players’ tunnels.”
Elsewhere in the written decision, there are some not-so-subtle indications of the judge’s impatience with the NFL’s efforts to keep fighting over a settled issue. From page 9: “Defendants can articulate no reason why these arguments were not raised in their response to Plaintiffs’ Motion for Reconsideration. . . . With sophisticated law firms, it is hard to fathom a plausible explanation.”
Also, from the same page: “Defendants opted for an iterative stream of arguments to buy themselves a few more months hanging out in the players’ tunnels. . . .”
Putting it another way, and as a judge said to the opposing lawyer in a case I was handling more than 20 years ago, “At some point, you stop arguing to the court and start arguing with the court.”
Judge Caproni’s order concludes like this: “Defendants’ seemingly-never-ending list of arguments why they should not have to litigate this case has run its course. Stepping back, while Defendants are free to spend endless attorneys’ fees to pursue the forum they think will be most advantageous to them, arguments about the superior efficiencies of arbitration ring hollow. . . . Instead of proceeding, discovery and motion practice for these three teams have been further delayed so this Court can deal with these teams’ attempt to take yet another run at how to avoid district court litigation and will, presumably, be delayed further while they pursue yet another appeal.”
It’s a mostly tactful way of saying to the NFL, “Enough. You’ve lost on this issue. Stop asking for arbitration and get to work on defending yourself in the litigation.”
Attorney Doug Wigdor issues a statement regarding the latest decision.
“At this point, the NFL and its teams have lost on this issue at the Second Circuit, were denied en banc review by the Second Circuit, were denied Supreme Court review and have now had the District Court twice confirm that the claims will not proceed in an NFL-controlled forum,” Wigdor said. “We hope the NFL and its teams will accept these rulings and proceed with the litigation.”
Presumably, that will happen. One of these days. Or, more accurately, one of these years.
We’ve argued in the past that the NFL should embrace the transparency the UFL brings to officiating. A member of the NFL’s Competition Committee believes it will.
“And I think every once in a while the benefit of this other league we have, I think quite honestly it’s been helpful for our league,” Broncos coach Sean Payton recently told Jason La Canfora of SportsBoom.com. “Every once in a while you see something you like, and I think Dean Blandino and his crew, when we kick live right to the booth review, I think that’s healthy. And I think you’ll see that in the next two or three years in our league.”
As Blandino told Rich Eisen in April, transparency in officiating “eliminates some of the angst and some of maybe the conspiracy theories.” Keeping the review process a state secret makes people think the NFL has something to hide — especially when the UFL and a growing number of college conferences have pulled up the shades and thrown the doors open.
In this age of legalized, normalized, and heavily monetized sports betting, it’s important not only to get calls right but to create the perception that they’re doing everything they can to get calls right.
“I definitely think you’ll see that coming,” Payton said. “I think it’s healthy, and it’s certainly comforting for the fan when you can see how they arrive at decisions. And I think it’s fair, especially to the officials and the people doing the review, to see what we arrived at.”
Yes, Payton is just one voice. But he’s not alone.
“I think a number of people feel the same way,” Payton added.
While there will be logistical challenges, especially during the controlled chaos coming from the cluster of 1:00 p.m. ET kickoffs on every given Sunday, it makes sense to create the infrastructure to both handle reviews efficiently and accurately, and to communicate the information transparently.
It’s one thing for folks on the labor side to talk about the increased use of grass for NFL fields. It’s another thing for management to do it.
Recently, Raiders owner Mark Davis explained his commitment to grass “for safety purposes,” which may have rankled some of his partners who would prefer to see everyone hold the rope in the grass vs. turf tug-of-war. Broncos coach Sean Payton has also chimed in with comments pointing to more grass fields.
“Our game is a little different,” Payton told Jason La Canfora of SportsBoom.com. “When you’re playing in the trenches on that surface, you know, the type of football shoes we wear are different. . . . But eventually I think you’re going to see grass in more stadiums where it’s possible.”
Currently, the Dolphins, Bills (who switched to grass for their new stadium), Browns, Steelers, Ravens, Jaguars, Broncos, Chiefs, Raiders, Eagles, Commanders, Packers, Bears, Buccaneers, Cardinals, and 49ers play on grass. The other 16 play on artificial turf.
La Canfora notes that Payton acknowledged the logistical issues for having grass fields in covered stadiums. Still, multiple enclosed structures have shown that grass is doable in a dome for the World Cup.
It all comes down to money. And, with more and more players clamoring for grass, it also comes down to collective bargaining. The league won’t want more teams to choose to change from the fake stuff to the real stuff, with the issue of switching now becoming a potential topic for the next CBA.
Preference for grass and prioritizing grass are two different issues. The owners can now dig their heels into the artificial turf and force the players to make a concession in order to get it. Which is a good way for the owners to get something for doing it.
Last year, the Broncos were on pace to break the NFL record for sacks for much of the season, before falling short late in the year. This year, they’re expecting to get that record.
That’s the word from Broncos defensive lineman Zach Allen, who said defensive coordinator Vance Joseph’s schemes are guaranteed to give all the Broncos’ pass rushers plenty of opportunities to get to the opposing quarterback.
“In this league you’ve kind of always got to keep on finding ways to get better and adjusting and all that,” Allen said, via the Denver Post. “It also helps when you’ve got ‘V.J.’ dialing stuff up that helps us get one-on-ones. We’ve got a lot of good guys and that’s going to create a lot of opportunities for people. We came close to the sack record last year and we fully expect to break it this year.”
The NFL record for sacks in a season is 72, set by the 1984 Bears. Last year, the Broncos finished with 68 sacks. Allen is confident he and his teammates can find five more sacks this year.
In overtime of the divisional playoff game in Denver, Bills wide receiver Brandin Cooks had a catch in his hands at the Broncos’ 20-yard line that would have put Buffalo in range for the game-winning field goal and sent the Bills to the AFC Championship Game. But Denver’s Ja’Quan McMillian ripped the ball out of Cooks’ arms for an interception, and the Broncos kicked a game-winning field goal of their own on the next possession.
Cooks still can’t believe it.
“For a week straight, I was watching it over and over,” Cooks told Tim Graham of TheAthletic.com. “But I knew, as a father, that I had to put it away. If I’d have kept watching, it would have put me in some type of mood that my wife and my kids didn’t deserve.”
The NFL has confirmed that the official’s call of an interception was correct, but Cooks thinks he had possession and was down before McMillian got the ball from him.
“I will continue to process it until I get back on the field,” Cooks said, “but I think the biggest thing I can say is that I still feel like it was a catch. After it happened, seeing some of the so-called controversial calls that were called a catch, I just had to turn the playoffs off because I’m like, ‘Yo, what is going on?’ For me, the way that my mind operates is, ‘OK, what can I do about it?’ And what I can do about it is get back on the field, continue to work on being the best that I can be and making sure next time it’s a catch-and-run for a touchdown and leave it in no one else’s hands.”
If Cooks had completed the catch, the Bills would have spent the next week preparing to face the Patriots in the AFC Championship Game, not firing head coach Sean McDermott. The Bills might have gone to the Super Bowl, and Josh Allen certainly would have given the Patriots’ defense a tougher test than Broncos backup quarterback Jarrett Stidham gave New England in the AFC Championship. And Broncos quarterback Bo Nix would have gone into the offseason healthy rather than spending the offseason rehabbing the broken ankle that he suffered just before the Broncos’ game-winning field goal.
These are thoughts Cooks has often.
“It doesn’t keep me up or give me unhealthy flashbacks,” Cooks said. “But from a competitive nature, I still think about not winning the Super Bowl as if it happened yesterday.”
The Broncos’ playoff overtime win against the Bills could have gone very differently, if a play Broncos coach Sean Payton called had actually been run.
Payton said after the game that he called a fake punt on fourth-and-11 in overtime, only to have the players change it at the line of scrimmage and run a normal punt.
A lengthy ESPN article about Payton details how he spent hours studying fake punts and found one he liked that the Raiders once ran. The Broncos adopted that Raiders play in their own special teams playbook and referred to as Rutgers Special because the ball would have gone to the upback, Michael Burton, who played at Rutgers.
The Broncos never actually ran Rutgers Special in the divisional playoffs against the Bills, but Payton confirmed after the game that he told his punt team to run it at the end of the first possession of overtime, on fourth-and-11 at their own 38-yard line. If the Broncos had failed, the Bills would have taken over only needing a field goal to win the game, and already being in range for a long field goal. It was a massive risk Payton was taking by making that call, but Payton has called risky special teams plays in big situations before, most famously the surprise onside kick he called as head coach of the Saints in their Super Bowl XLIV win over the Colts.
It’s not clear what the Broncos’ players saw at the line of scrimmage that made them call the fake off and punt the ball instead. But Payton described a fake as “Worth the risk” when the alternative was punting the ball to Josh Allen, and Payton added, “We had the right look.”
As it turned out, Allen threw an interception on the possession after the punt, and the Broncos drove into field goal range and kicked the game-winner to advance to the AFC Championship Game. We’ll never know what might have happened if the players had run the fake punt that Payton wanted.
A new article from Seth Wickersham of ESPN takes a look at Broncos coach Sean Payton’s hectic week before the AFC Championship. While taking a look at it, one thing stood out.
After the Patriots fired coach Bill Belichick following the 2023 season, Payton (who had just finished his first year with the Broncos) “considered suggesting” to owner Greg Penner that Payton would step back to the position of assistant head coach, running the offense. Belichick would hold the job until he won 15 games, breaking Don Shula’s all-time record of 347.
Belichick has 333 total wins, 14 behind Shula. (As regular-season wins go, Shula has 26 more than Belichick: 328 to 302.)
Wickersham explains that, "[i]n the end, it was too complicated — and maybe too fanciful.”
It was, as we understand it, Payton simply thinking out loud. It would have been practically impossible, but he at least formulated the thought out of his respect for Belichick.
Ultimately, it may have been the only way for Belichick to catch Shula. With only one NFL interview in three hiring cycles (including a 2026 turnover that had 10 open jobs), Belichick’s NFL door seems to be closed.
