The Buffalo Bills are hiring Denver Broncos secondary coach and passing game coordinator Jim Leonhard as their new defensive coordinator, a league source confirmed Saturday.

Leonhard is the second former Broncos assistant in as many days to join new Bills head coach Joe Brady’s staff after Pete Carmichael was hired as the team’s offensive coordinator Friday.

Leonhard worked on head coach Sean Payton’s staff in Denver the last two seasons, his first as an NFL coach. Payton initially wanted to hire Leonhard when he first got to Denver in 2023, but Leonhard was recovering from hip surgery and spent the season serving as a consultant for the University of Illinois.

Leonhard spent 10 seasons as an NFL safety, and the first three of those came with the Bills, who he joined as an undrafted free agent out of Wisconsin in 2005. He later rejoined the Bills as a veteran in 2013 and had a career-high four interceptions that season. He began a six-year stint as an assistant coach at Wisconsin in 2016 and became the team’s interim head coach in 2022.

In Denver, Leonhard helped develop one of the league’s best secondaries during the last two seasons, which included a Defensive Player of the Year campaign from cornerback Pat Surtain II in 2024.

“He has a lot of football intellect,” Surtain said recently of Leonhard. “He has a lot of experience in this league playing at a high level, and having that foundation in the room sets us up for a lot of success. He always hones in on practice habits and playing with the right technique and stuff like this. We are able to pick his brain, and it’s always good to have a coach like that with that experience and those smarts.”

Safety Devon Key said one of Leonhard’s strengths as a teacher is his ability to translate his playing experience into a relatable way that helps his players digest the schemes he’s installing.

“Jim’s a fantastic coach and a great leader,” said Key, a reserve safety who earned an All-Pro berth this season as a special teams player. “He knows what he’s talking about. As a former player, he knows what we go through, and he was one of those guys who had to dig and grind and work his way up to the top. I respect him so much for that, just because of the position I was in.

“Knowing the game and the speed of the game for himself and knowing how he saw things, he can relate to us and how we see things. We can bounce ideas back and forth about how we can attack in a game plan and how we are going to prepare for the week.”

Shortly after Leonhard was hired to coach Denver’s secondary in 2024, he said the foundation of a good back end defensively hinges on acquiring and developing defensive backs who are versatile in how they can be deployed.

“I was a guy throughout my career that had to do a little bit of everything,” he said. “You need versatility, whether it’s flexibility between corners, safeties being able to play outside, inside. You can’t hide. You can’t hide guys anymore. You have to be able to communicate and think. If you can’t play inside the numbers, they just put their best receiver in there and work those matchups. So that’s a big emphasis.”