BUFFALO, NY. — Former Bills player Jim Leonhard is expected to be hired as the team’s defensive coordinator, sources told ESPN’s Adam Schefter on Saturday.<\/p>\n
The hiring will mark a change in direction on the defensive side of the ball after Sean McDermott was fired following nine seasons leading the Bills and their defense.<\/p>\n
Leonhard, 43, is currently the defensive pass game coordinator\/assistant head coach with the Denver Broncos. This year, the Broncos’ defense put up 68 sacks, four short of tying the single-season record (72, 1984 Bears), and allowed the second-fewest yards per game (278.2).<\/p>\n
Leonhard joined the Broncos in 2024 as the defensive pass game coordinator\/defensive backs coach.<\/p>\n
Prior to that, he was a senior football analyst at Illinois and spent 2016-22 coaching at Wisconsin, including all but one year as the defensive coordinator and spending some of the 2022 season as interim head coach.<\/p>\n
Undrafted out of Wisconsin, Leonhard played for the Bills from 2005 to 2007 and in 2013. The 10-year NFL safety and special teams player also played for the Baltimore Ravens, New York Jets, Broncos and Cleveland Browns.<\/p>\n
Leonhard marks the second Broncos coach that new Bills coach Joe Brady is set to add to his staff in a coordinator role. The Bills are also set to hire Pete Carmichael as their offensive coordinator, according to a source.\u00a0Brady worked under Broncos coach Sean Payton in 2017-18.<\/p>\n
Brady and Leonhard have not overlapped on a coaching staff previously.<\/p>\n
“I only get one opportunity to be a head football coach,” Brady said during his introductory news conference. “I’m not in the business of hiring my friends, and making sure I want to get the best football coaches for these players cause they deserve that, and so, that’s what’s important to me.”<\/p>\n
Leonhard also met with the Los Angeles Chargers and Ravens for defensive jobs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BUFFALO, NY. — Former Bills player Jim Leonhard is expected to be hired as the team’s defensive coordinator,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":445576,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[436],"tags":[133920,49,48,514,82],"class_list":["post-445575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-buffalo-bills-sports-football-team-team-statscom-324","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=445575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445575\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/445576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=445575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=445575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=445575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}