Giants request head-coaching interview with Broncos special-teams coordinator Darren Rizzi

Another key Broncos staffer has entered the growing pool of head-coaching candidates in Denver.

On Thursday, the New York Giants officially requested to interview Broncos special-teams coordinator Darren Rizzi for their head-coach vacancy, a source confirmed to The Denver Post. Rizzi’s now the third member of this Denver staff to receive head-coaching interest in an increasingly wild NFL coaching cycle, as defensive coordinator Vance Joseph’s had a busy week of interviews and 30-year-old quarterbacks coach Davis Webb has drawn interest from Las Vegas and Baltimore.

Rizzi’s a longtime ally of Broncos head coach Sean Payton, hired as New Orleans’ special-teams coordinator in 2019 and working with Payton for three seasons with the Saints. Payton hired him again in February to serve the same role in Denver, after Rizzi spent the final half of the 2024 season as the Saints’ interim head coach following the firing of head coach Dennis Allen.

New Orleans went 3-5 games with Rizzi at the helm in 2024. In August, the Broncos coordinator told reporters that being an NFL head coach was “certainly a goal” of his moving forward.

“It’s one of the reasons I decided to come to this organization and work with Sean,” Rizzi said. “I know what kind of organization is run here by (Greg) Penner, and George (Paton) and Sean. It’s a first-class place, it’s a place where I felt like we could have a lot of success.

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“And, listen, we all know that those opportunities come from success. And there’s no better place I’d rather be than to get that opportunity.”

The Broncos’ special-teams unit has waxed and waned in 2025 under Rizzi, with a largely rocky first half of the season. In November, after a rash of calamities — All-Pro returner Marvin Mims Jr. sustaining a concussion on a play he wasn’t supposed to be in the game for in Week 8, and Houston blocking a Wil Lutz field goal the following week — Rizzi stood in front of reporters and said he took “full responsibility” on cleaning up special-teams play.

Rizzi’s unit has improved monumentally over the back half of the season, though. Mims led the NFL in punt-return yardage despite missing two games, and safety Devon Key emerged as one of the better special-teams tacklers in the league. Rookie punter Jeremy Crawshaw stabilized, too, finishing above league-average in 2025 in percentage of boots placed inside the opponent’s 20-yard-line.

Rizzi spent the majority of his NFL career in Miami, where he was the Dolphins’ special-teams coordinator from 2010 to 2016 and served as the associate head coach in 2017 and 2018. He was a collegiate head coach at the University of New Haven from 1999 to 2001, and at the University of Rhode Island in 2008.

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