Denver Broncos: Renaldo Hill joining Brandon Staley with Chargers
The Denver Broncos’ coaching staff, to this point, has not taken on a lot of change. Although some assistant coaches have received interviews elsewhere, nobody had left Vic Fangio’s staff to join the many new coaching staffs around the league.
That is, until some news broke on Monday morning.
Defensive backs coach Renaldo Hill, a former Denver Broncos safety himself, is apparently leaving the Denver Broncos to join Brandon Staley’s staff with the Los Angeles Chargers.
He’s getting a promotion to defensive coordinator.
Sources: The Chargers are hiring Broncos DBs coach Renaldo Hill as their new defensive coordinator. Hill worked with Brandon Staley in Denver in 2019, played in the league for a decade.
— Albert Breer (@AlbertBreer) January 25, 2021
Staley, you’ll recall, was the Denver Broncos’ outside linebackers coach on Fangio’s staff for the 2019 season.
When Sean McVay offered Staley a job as defensive coordinator with the Los Angeles Rams in 2020, it was an opportunity he couldn’t pass up and it led to immediate success. The Rams’ defensive turnaround in 2020 was tremendous and Staley got a number of head coaching interviews.
He somewhat surprisingly landed the job with the Los Angeles Chargers, whose main building block is quarterback Justin Herbert. Herbert’s offensive coaching staff has now been dismantled with Nick Sirianni leaving for the Philadelphia Eagles.
The Chargers are reportedly moving to bring in Joe Lombardi (Saints) as their new offensive coordinator.
The move for Hill should be beneficial if the Chargers’ defense can stay mostly healthy. That unit has a ton of talent and Hill would greatly benefit in terms of his future head coaching prospects if they can give him even just one mostly healthy season.
Former Denver Broncos cornerback Chris Harris Jr. is still on the Chargers’ roster and will certainly have some familiarity with both Staley and Hill. Considering Harris was playing out of his element in year one under Vic Fangio as a primarily outside corner, it will be interesting to see how Staley and Hill handle him.
Hill’s responsibilities in Los Angeles will obviously be vastly different, but how much will he be “calling” the defense since that is a major reason why Staley was hired by the Chargers?
It will be fascinating to see how this new staff works together in Los Angeles with the Chargers, who should be a team on the upswing with the record-breaking Justin Herbert under center.