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The Denver Broncos better get a plumber in the building sometime soon, because there are some toilets that may need to be reinforced if Darren Rizzi is coming to town. The former special teams coordinator and interim head coach of the New Orleans Saints had been holding out hope that he’d be able to lose that interim tag, but as the Saints appear to have their sights set on Philadelphia Eagles offensive coordinator Kellen Moore to become their next head coach, Rizzi has lined up a ‘Plan B.’
“As the Saints zero in on Kellen Moore, slated to have another conversation with him after the Super Bowl, interim coach Darren Rizzi is likely to become the new Broncos special teams coordinator,” writes NFL insider Ian Rapoport on X.
The writing has been on the wall for this development for the last couple of weeks, ever since the Broncos fired their previous special teams coordinator Ben Kotwica on January 17th. Rizzi immediately became tied to this opening in Denver, assuming he didn’t emerge as the front-runner for the head coaching job in New Orleans. But as the Saints have shifted their focus from Joe Brady to Mike McCarthy to Kellen Moore, that meant Rizzi was almost certainly going to end up back alongside Sean Payton.
Payton hired Rizzi to his staff in New Orleans back in 2019, right in the midst of a second Golden Era of football during Payton’s 15 year run as the head coach of the Saints. When Payton stepped away following the 2021 season, Rizzi remained on the staff of Payton’s predecessor Dennis Allen, and eventually took over as the interim head coach when Allen was fired after losing a seventh consecutive game in the middle of the season earlier this year. Rizzi famously clogged a toilet and won his first game as interim head coach.
The Broncos were ranked 4th in special teams DVOA last season according to Aaron Schatz, so Rizzi will have a solid foundation to work with as he arrives in the Mile High City.
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