Report: Broncos are hiring Michael Wilhoite to be their outside linebackers coach

According to 9NEWS Denver’s Mike Klis, the Denver Broncos are hiring Michael Wilhoite to be their linebackers coach under defensive coordinator Vance Joseph. He also states that he will be the Broncos' outside linebackers coach for Sean Payton and under Vance Joseph’s defensive staff.

Wilhoite is a former NFL linebacker who spent the majority of his playing career playing for the San Francisco 49ers. He played for them from 2011 to 2016 and spent one season, in 2017, with the Seattle Seahawks. After that, he went into coaching and landed his first NFL coaching job in 2019 with Sean Payton and the New Orleans Saints. He was a special teams assistant in 2019 and a defensive assistant in 2020 before joining the Los Angeles Chargers as a linebackers coach from 2021 to 2022. Now, he will serve in that same role under Sean Payton and defensive coordinator Vance Joseph with the Broncos.

It was rumored and speculated earlier in the day that current New England Patriots defensive coach Matt Patricia was considered for this job, but that obviously did not happen. However, KOA’s Benjamin Allbright later tweeted out that Patricia is being looked at as an assistant, but not as a linebackers coach. So, the door is not completely shut on the idea of former Patriots defensive coordinator and Detroit Lions head coach joining Sean Payton’s coaching staff.

With the Broncos, he will be coaching up veteran Randy Gregory and up-and-coming players like Baron Browning, Nik Bonitto, and Jonathon Cooper. Hopefully, he will be able to get the most out of this unit.

The Broncos coaching staff is coming together, especially on the defensive side of the ball. We learned today that former Broncos head coach Vance Joseph has been hired as the defensive coordinator and that they will be retaining defensive line coach Marcus Dixon and up-and-coming secondary coach Christian Parker as well. Add in Wilhoite as the linebackers coach and the staff is nearly complete.

After some fear of how long it was taking Payton to hire a coaching staff, it appears he has nearly completed the hiring of these coaches and has done it mostly behind the scenes.