Broncos quarterbacks coach/pass game coordinator Davis Webb had his second interview with the Raiders on Monday night.
The Raiders announced the completion of that interview. It was their second of the day as they also had their second meeting with Bills offensive coordinator Joe Brady.
Webb also interviewed with the Bills for the first time on Monday and Brady has also met with his employers about succeeding Sean McDermott. The Cardinals and Browns are the only other teams currently looking for a new head coach.
The Raiders also had a second interview with Panthers defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero and they interviewed former Giants head coach Brian Daboll last weekend. Seahawks offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak had a virtual interview with the team earlier this month and could have a second interview this week, but there’s been no word of one being on the schedule at this point.
Broncos Clips
Say what you will about Sean Payton’s fateful decision to go for it on fourth down in the second quarter of Sunday’s AFC Championship, but you can’t say this: It was not a product of Payton being beholden to analytics.
Payton has been open about the ongoing influence of numbers in football. For Payton, they’re simply a piece of the puzzle. When he makes a move that seems to be driven by analytics, he’s not doing so at the behest of the Ivy League mathematician whispering in his ear. It’s Payton’s decision, influenced by all of the factors — including how he feels about the play he plans to call.
Indeed, and as reported by Seth Wickersham of ESPN.com, Payton had a decidedly old-school reaction when Bears coach Ben Johnson passed on a field goal to cap the opening drive of the divisional game against the Rams.
“Kick it,” Payton said.
After the play failed (the Rams intercepted the Bears near the goal line), Payton added, “Why are coaches not kicking field goals?”
The ESPN-Analytics-Say-Go vibe has taken over the sport in recent years, with coaches clinging to slim differences in percentages to justify being “aggressive!” Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. (And for some teams, like the Lions, the commitment to going for it removes all unpredictability from the moment.)
On Sunday, Payton seemingly zigged when he otherwise would have been expected to zag. He told Wickersham the goal was to go up 14-0, even thought 10-0 (and two scores) may have been good enough. And Payton thought he had the right play.
But there was a problem. And this is a credit to Patriots coach Mike Vrabel. He had self-scouted. He broke a tendency. He gave the Broncos a look that made it appear the play would work. At the snap, the Patriots shifted into a defense that neutralized the play.
“The look they showed on film, and the look we saw, wasn’t the look we got,” Payton told Wickersham.
That’s a huge part of the go-for-it decision. Calling the right play. And thinking the play that was called will work. There are many factors that influence the outcome. And many factors that determine the decision to go for it.
For Payton, it’s never about blind adherence to math. He ultimately made a decision based on all factors. And the Patriots ultimately disguised the defense they’d use to make the Broncos think the play they’d called would work.
Which overlooks another key factor in the go-for-it decision. Will the defense ultimately have a strategy for stopping that play you think will deliver success? When facing the Patriots and Vrabel, it’s worth taking seriously the prospect that they’ll be ready.
Still, it’s fair to believe Payton should have taken the points. Going up by 10 points could have meant everything, especially given the dramatic turn in the weather. And especially since a two-score game may have prompted an inexperienced quarterback to try a little too hard and to make a mistake that could open the floodgates for the Broncos.
Running back J.K. Dobbins was having a great season in his first year with the Broncos. It ended in Week 10 due to a foot injury. He wants it to in 2026 and beyond.
Dobbins explained his desire to stay in Denver to reporters on Monday.
“It starts with the ownership,” Dobbins said. “They get us everything that we need to be successful here. . . . There were things I would ask [owner Greg] Penner, and he would get it to us. He would get it to me. Then my man, coach Sean Payton, I love him to death. He’s one of my favorite coaches ever. Then [running backs] coach Lou Ayeni, too. It has been a great process with everyone here. Then the offensive line, and just like everybody, the brothers, and like the defense. I even felt like I was part of the defense because they wanted me here. [Defensive coordinator Vance Joseph] wanted me here. So it’s just been a great time here in my short time. I think that I’ll be here. Hopefully, I will. I think I’m a Bronco for life.”
Even if Dobbins (who had 772 rushing yards in 10 games) isn’t back in 2026, his connection to RJ Harvey will continue.
“I’ve been trying to give him feedback and all that stuff,” Dobbins said of Harvey. “Yesterday’s loss was tough, right? We weren’t successful on the ground. And I just tell them, ‘You have to just go back to the film and don’t worry about what the outside people are saying because they’re going to be on your butt, but you’re going to get better.’ I’m going to help him get better even if I’m not here. He’s my rookie forever. His name, I’m attached to him, and I want to make sure he gets better. So that’s my job, and I will.”
Dobbins becomes a free agent on March 11, unless he signs a new contract with the Broncos before then.
Still only 27, Dobbins has played well when healthy. He’s had back luck with a variety of injuries, however, and he’s yet to put together a full season with the kind of numbers that his game-by-game performances would generate.
Two new tight ends were added to the AFC Pro Bowl roster on Monday.
Dalton Kincaid of the Bills and Tyler Warren of the Colts will now be headed to San Francisco for next week’s festivities. They replace Travis Kelce of the Chiefs and Brock Bowers of the Raiders.
Kincaid had 39 catches for 571 yards and five touchdowns for the Bills this season. He also had nine catches for 111 yards and two touchdowns. It’s the first time he has been selected for the Pro Bowl.
Warren was a first-round pick last year and led all rookies with 76 catches in the regular season. He picked up 817 yards and four touchdowns on those receptions.
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.
In the days leading up to the AFC Championship Game, one of the big questions was how Broncos quarterback Jarrett Stidham would fair in his first start since Week 18 of the 2023 season.
Stidham hit a deep shot to Marvin Mims on the second offensive possession of the game to set up a touchdown pass and provide hope that the moment would not prove to be too big for him. That feeling faded in the second quarter when Stidham was pressured by Patriots linebacker Christian Elliss on a third down play. Stidham backpedaled furiously and tried to throw the ball away, but wound up throwing it backward and the Patriots recovered on Denver’s 12-yard line to set up their only touchdown of the afternoon.
The Broncos had shut New England down on defense until that point and Stidham said after the 10-7 loss that he “probably should have just eaten the sack.”
“Obviously, I can’t put our team in a bad position like that,’' Stidham said. “I was trying to throw it away. ... The pressure, he just got up on me real fast and I was just trying to get rid of it. Like I said, I just can’t put the ball in a position like that. That was completely on me.”
The Broncos had a lot of other chances after the Patriots tied the game 7-7, but their offense never clicked before or after the weather turned treacherous in the second half. There’s no way to know if things would have been any different with Bo Nix in the lineup and the Broncos will now have to start all over after falling short at the worst possible time.
