Broncos’ Sean Payton preparing for familiar face in Miami’s Vic Fangio

Sean Payton is plenty familiar with Vic Fangio. Heck, he knows who taught Fangio math in sixth grade.

But an offensive game-planner can never have too much information about his next adversary.

Payton, as it happens, now works in a place with a wealth of Fangio familiarity. After all, Miami’s defensive coordinator coached many of the current Broncos defenders and players up through the 2021 season during his nearly three years as Denver’s head coach.

“I was just talking to (veteran safety Kareem Jackson) earlier,” Payton said Wednesday. “Right as I was walking out to practice, I had a question about some red zone stuff.”

Secondary coach Christian Parker is the only full-time defensive coach remaining from the Fangio era, but Payton said, still, “we had a number of discussions last night where I’d walk down the hallway, ‘What do you think?’”

The veteran coach’s respect for Fangio is clear. They’ve never worked together, but Fangio’s from Scranton, Pennsylvania, as are Payton’s parents. Back in February, Payton told reporters at the NFL Scouting Combine that his cousin taught Fangio when he was in middle school.

That wasn’t all Payton said about Fangio that day.

After assembling his staff and hiring defensive coordinator Vance Joseph in February, Payton readily acknowledged he tried to convince Fangio to come back to Denver before interviewing Rex Ryan, Joseph and others.

“Vic was supposed to be part of the plan and then you guys (media) scared him away,” he said then, after he and Fangio each spent 2022 out of full-time coaching.

“Do I think he would have been a great asset for us? Yes,” Payton continued. “So we were planning in this year away that if the right scenario came up, that we’d work together. I think (Denver) was just a little unique because it wasn’t too long ago that he was here. Certainly, I tried to talk to him and tried to twist his arm. I’m excited for his opportunity in Miami. I think he’s a talented coach.”

Back then, Payton said he joked with Fangio that half the league was running variations of his defense. The Broncos, of course, had the real thing before transitioning to Ejiro Evero in 2022 and Joseph this fall.

“He’s always done a great job of keeping the roof on the coverage and you’ve got to sustain drives,” Payton said. “It’s hard to find big plays based on the structure of his defense. It’s easy to say they’re very sound — most defenses are — but, man, the technique they play with and they’re well coached. …

“There’s certainly familiarity to what he does and he’s got the spinoff of other coaches, now, running very similar systems.”

Broncos quarterback Russell Wilson, who faced Fangio several times during Fangio’s years in San Francisco (2011-14) and Chicago (2015-18), called him, “a tremendous defensive coordinator. He knows how to coach the guys up. He’s one of those coaches that’s (among) the all-time greats, especially on the defensive side of the ball.”

Fangio’s not the only familiar face Denver will see Sunday. He’ll be deploying outside linebacker Bradley Chubb, who the Broncos traded for a first-round pick at last year’s trade deadline. Chubb almost immediately signed a five-year extension worth up to $110 million ($63 million guaranteed). Then in the offseason Denver traded that pick to New Orleans for the right to hire Payton.

“Chubb’s awesome,” inside linebacker Alex Singleton said Monday. “The short extent I was with him last year, loved him. He’s a great guy, was a great leader around here. Excited to see him on Sunday and obviously super happy for him with the contract he got and all of that stuff.”

Then there’s head coach Mike McDaniel, the Aurora native who got his start in coaching with an internship under Mike Shanahan when he was in his early 20s. He said Wednesday the Broncos were, “the team that I found my love for football with.”

“There are some people with ties to the Broncos organization for sure, but one of the great things about this team and the people in that locker room is they would feel enormously guilty if they approached it with anything other than the team’s best interest,” McDaniel said. “Thinking about last year, or where you’re drafted — I’m sure there are memories and stuff and I will never speak for them — but the one thing that I can tell by actions is that their primary focus is the Miami Dolphins and not their score to settle or whatever may be created in the media.

“That’s not really going on in-house.”

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