{"id":720294,"date":"2026-02-01T00:35:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-01T00:35:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/720294\/"},"modified":"2026-02-01T00:35:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-01T00:35:13","slug":"new-bills-coach-joe-brady-fills-defensive-coordinator-job-by-hiring-jim-leonhard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/720294\/","title":{"rendered":"New Bills coach Joe Brady fills defensive coordinator job by hiring Jim Leonhard"},"content":{"rendered":"

ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. (AP) \u2014 The Buffalo Bills hired Jim Leonhard as their defensive coordinator under new head coach Joe Brady<\/a> on Saturday.<\/p>\n

The 43-year-old Leonhard spent the past two seasons with the Denver Broncos, including last year as the team\u2019s assistant head coach and defensive pass game coordinator.<\/p>\n

Leonhard was a candidate for the Cowboys\u2019 defensive coordinator gig before Dallas hired Christian Parker.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cJim\u2019s vision for what he wants from our defense and the personality they play with is the exact style of what I was looking for from a defensive coordinator,\u201d Brady said in a statement. \u201cYou could tell how smart and versatile his secondary was when we watched them on tape. He is super intelligent, a great communicator, and highly regarded in this league.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Leonhard is the second Broncos assistant to join Brady\u2019s staff after Pete Carmichael was hired as Buffalo\u2019s offensive coordinator<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cPete is a great communicator and has no ego,\u201d Brady said. \u201cOne of the most important things about having Pete on staff is that I have full trust in his vision and his ability to run the meetings and installs, which will allow me to focus on my other duties as a head coach.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Bills also filled their special teams coordinator vacancy by hiring Jeff Rodgers, who spent the past eight years holding the same position with the Arizona Cardinals.<\/p>\n

Rodgers has 22 seasons of NFL special teams coaching experience, previously working in Chicago, Denver, Carolina and San Francisco. The 48-year-old Rodgers replaces Chris Tabor, who left Buffalo after one season for the same role with the Miami Dolphins.<\/p>\n

Brady previously worked with Carmichael in New Orleans but has no known connections to Leonhard. Buffalo\u2019s season ended with a 33-30 overtime loss to the Broncos two weeks ago in the divisional round of the playoffs.<\/p>\n

Leonhard\u2019s hiring fills a key vacancy as the Bills move forward under Brady, Buffalo\u2019s former offensive coordinator, who takes over after Sean McDermott was fired following a nine-year tenure.<\/p>\n

While Brady brings continuity to Buffalo\u2019s Josh Allen-led offense, Leonhard will oversee a unit that was built to meet McDermott\u2019s defensive vision. He replaces Bobby Babich, who spent the past two seasons as the Bills coordinator before leaving to take the same position in Green Bay last week.<\/p>\n

In his opening news conference<\/a> on Thursday, Brady envisioned Buffalo\u2019s defense taking on an attacking identity similar to his approach on offense. Injuries and a transition to youth led to Buffalo finishing seventh in the NFL in yards allowed but 28th against the run and 14th in sacks per passing attempts.<\/p>\n

The Broncos, by comparison, finished with 68 sacks last season to lead the NFL for a second straight year.<\/p>\n

Leonhard spent two separate stints in Buffalo during a 10-year career as an NFL defensive back, including his first three spanning 2005-07. He was an undrafted free agent out of Wisconsin and ended his career with Cleveland in 2014.<\/p>\n

Two years later, Leonhard returned to Wisconsin to begin his coaching career and worked his way up from overseeing the Badgers secondary to a five-year stint as defensive coordinator. He closed the 2022 season as Wisconsin\u2019s interim head coach following the firing of Paul Chryst, before leaving the program to spend the following year at Illinois.<\/p>\n

Find more NFL coverage from The Dallas Morning News here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. (AP) \u2014 The Buffalo Bills hired Jim Leonhard as their defensive coordinator under new head…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":720295,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2048],"tags":[1101,215,214,53,2086,96665,230,257,7,6,9],"class_list":{"0":"post-720294","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-buffalo-bills","8":"tag-article","9":"tag-bills","10":"tag-buffalo","11":"tag-buffalo-bills","12":"tag-buffalobills","13":"tag-christian-parker","14":"tag-cowboys","15":"tag-dallas-cowboys","16":"tag-football","17":"tag-nfl","18":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115992574473561726","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=720294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720294\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/720295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=720294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=720294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=720294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}