Plenty of NFL Players want to get into coaching after their careers are over, but they discover that the road to a coaching job isn’t smooth or predictable. That was definitely the case for the Denver Broncos new quarterback coach, Logan Kilgore, a former NFL quarterback who found himself up against it when he went to look for a coaching job and discovered the current hiring cycle was over.
Kilgore tried to connect with his old college coach at Middle Tennessee, Rick Stockstill, but Stockstill advised Kilgore to expand his network, according to Parker Gabriel of the Denver Post.
But Kilgore didn’t want to wait, so he approached his friend Ryan Aplin, a former quarterback in the Sun Belt conference, and asked about the possibility of connecting with him and new Arkansas State head coach Butch Jones.
There wasn't really a job open with the hiring cycle done, but Kilgore offered to coach for free, which involved he and his wife, Brookey, moving from California to Arkansas. Crazily enough, Aplin talked Jones and offensive coordinator Keith Heckendorf into letting Kilgore into the building, and Kilgore’s wife agreed to the move.
Now the 35-year old Kilgore is coach Sean Payton’s latest coaching protege, and the newest quarterback coach is part of a revamped offensive staff as he steps into Webb’s old job. Kilgore made another important connection with the Mannings at the Manning Passing Academy, and both Jones and Peyton Manning were impressed by Kilgore’s thorough approach and work ethic.
“He’d come in and give a full report on them,” Jones said. “Not just personnel, but schematics. There’d be an accompanying video. I knew at a relatively early stage that this person had some special qualities to him and I knew he was going to be really successful.”
From there he got to coach quarterback Arch Manning at a New Orleans high school, and that led to a call from Sean Payton when Kilgore was at Arkansas State. Kilgore then ended up working with then-Oregon QB Bo Nix at the Senior Bowl, and now he’s Nix’s new position coach.
“He’s played the position. He’s sharp,” Payton said last month. “It was an easy transition for him. Like, immediate. When it can come from within the building, that’s really good.”
Young coaches with talent rise up quickly through the ranks these days, and Payton knows that. He just saw this happen with Webb, to the point where he was almost forced to promote Webb to the offensive coordinator position to keep from losing him to another team.
“The time clock for these young coaches that are good is quicker than you might think,” Payton said recently at the NFL combine.
Jones also offered his assessment and stamp of approval, given that he already knows about the work ethic.
“You can really see the Manning influence,” Jones said. “You can see, hopefully, the Arkansas State influence and you can see the Sean Payton influence. If you look at our lives and our careers, they are byproducts of our experiences and how you’ve been raised in this profession. I think we’re going to hear the Logan Kilgore name for many, many years in this profession.”