After a two-month whirlwind of changes and firings, the dust has settled on the Broncos’ defensive staff for 2025 — with one young coach earning a big promotion.
It’s been six years since Isaac Shewmaker graduated from Alabama. It’s been four years since he joined the NFL ranks, first spending a couple years as a defensive quality-control coach with the Chargers before being hired in the same role by Broncos head coach Sean Payton in 2023.
Now, he’s getting elevated to a general linebackers role, the team announced amid a wave of staff updates Thursday.
He sits in the spot of two vacant jobs after inside linebackers coach Greg Manusky was fired in January and outside linebackers coach Michael Wilhoite was let go Wednesday amid allegations of assaulting a police officer. Most NFL teams employ separate position coaches at ILB and OLB, so the Broncos may still look to bring in or elevate another coach to a linebacker role.
For now, though, the Broncos publicly finalized the rest of their 2025 defensive staff. Shewmaker’s fellow former QC analyst Addison Lynch was promoted to cornerbacks coach after working with the group heavily in 2024, a coaching title that didn’t exist on Denver’s staff last year. The club also confirmed the hire of former University of Tennessee assistant Brian Niedermeyer in a defensive quality-control role, while adding another QC name Broncos faithful are well familiar with: former Denver linebacker Todd Davis, a Super Bowl champion with Denver in 2015 who’ll step into his first NFL coaching role.
The 32-year-old Davis was a key member of late-2010s Bronco defenses before playing his final year of football with the Vikings in 2020 and later joining the Broncos media space as a full-time host of the DNVR Broncos Podcast. In a truly unorthodox coaching journey, he joined the Broncos’ staff during 2024 training camp as part of the Bill Walsh Diversity Coaching Fellowship. He’ll now officially reunite on a staff with Payton, who he played for during a brief rookie-year stint with the Saints in 2014, and defensive coordinator Vance Joseph, who he played under in 2017 and 2018 with the Broncos.
Wilhoite had been a candidate to replace Manusky for the Broncos’ vacant ILB job, but the former outside linebackers coach was charged with felony assault of an officer in relation to a late-February incident at Denver International Airport. On Wednesday, Payton said the Broncos “recognize the serious nature of the allegations” against Wilhoite and believed parting ways was “the best course of action,” in a statement shared with the Post.
Shewmaker, who worked heavily with Denver’s outside linebackers last year, will assume at least one of the vacancies left by Wilhoite and Manusky in his first position-coach role at either the collegiate or NFL level. He’ll be supplemented by Niedermeyer and Davis, who told The Post on Wednesday that he’d “probably primarily” help with the back end of the defense, including the linebackers and secondary. Senior defensive assistant Joe Vitt will likely provide help, too. The four-decade-plus NFL vet once coached linebackers with Payton on the Saints, including a brief stint in 2014 as Davis’ position coach.
Defensive pass game coordinator Jim Leonhard, who was hired by Payton in February 2024 from the University of Illinois, was given an assistant head coach title alongside new special teams coordinator Darren Rizzi. The Broncos also made some tweaks to their strength and conditioning staff, as former assistant Shaun Snee was promoted to director of the club’s strength program, with head strength coach and longtime Payton associate Dan Dalrymple still maintaining his former title. Former Oregon assistant strength coach Taylor Porter has also been hired to Snee’s staff.
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