Why Davis Webb’s ‘intensity and intentionality’ could elevate the Broncos

ENGLAND, Colo. – Shortly after Kliff Kingsbury was hired as the head coach at Texas Tech in December 2012, he sent Eric Morris on a fact-checking mission.

Offensive coordinator Morris Davis quickly stretched a series of lonely Texas highways to see Webb throw the ball. Webb, a nationally ranked recruit out of Prosper High School, committed to Texas Tech and former head coach Tommy Tuberville six months ago. Kingsbury liked Webb’s tape and his pedigree as a coach’s son, but Morris wanted to take a closer look at the passer and get Webb back before deciding to move forward with Webb as their quarterback.

“It might be my first mission,” Morris said. “Cliff wanted to see him throw and make sure we liked everything about him. So I’m watching him throw to the net. He’s 6-5, 200-pounds and can rip any throw anywhere on the field. His personality: You could tell he ate football as a kid.”

A month later, Webb arrived in Lubbock to begin his true freshman season. It didn’t take long for Morris, Kingsbury, and everyone else to realize that their new recruit was destined for a football career that would last far beyond the quarterback era.

“Davis was someone we all looked up to from a young age,” said Morris, now the head coach at Oklahoma State. “It was something you could see. He wanted as much information as you could. He was always in our offices saying, ‘What if we do this? What if we do this?’ … His coaching development has not shocked any of us around him.

Webb, 13 years after his first year as a quarterback at Texas Tech, will call Monday night’s first regular season NFL game as the Broncos’ offensive coordinator. For the first time in his two decades as an NFL head coach, Sean Payton has decided to turn the game over to someone else. He chose an assistant half his age – literally, Payton is 62. Webb is 31 years old — because Webb believes he “has a gift” to help elevate Denver’s offense during a championship run. Webb, who was the interim head coach of the New York Giants in 2017 when he was the starting quarterback behind Eli Manning, will focus on Webb’s first game with the Kansas City Chiefs and veteran defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo.

Webb said of playing for Spagnuolo: “I was the quarterback on the scout team, and back in the day, it was just the defensive players and I got banana pudding from the owner.” “… He’s one of the greatest defensive coordinators in the history of the game. It’s going to be a tough challenge for us right out of the gate.”

All of this may seem like a meteoric rise for Webb. There are those everywhere who remember how he played the game recently. When he called Jaylen Waddle’s opening play for a big gain in the preseason, Webb joked that the play was sweeter because it happened in front of Packers defensive back Xavier McKinney, his former Giants teammate. Another of his teammates in New York was Evan Ingram, who now has a tight end in Denver’s passing game. When Webb began his only NFL career, his second stint with the Giants in 2022, one of the players blocking for him was offensive lineman Matt Peart, now a backup lineman in Denver.

To see Webb as the NFL’s next new-kid-on-the-block coaching wunderkind, however, is to discount everything he went through to prepare himself for the moment that came Monday night.

“He’s been ready and he’s been waiting for this day,” quarterback Bo Nick said, “for a long time.”

Peart describes Webb’s coaching style in two synonyms: “intensity and intentionality.”

Both sides of that football personality were embodied in Webb’s first meaningful college game. Despite arriving a semester early in Lubbock, Webb ultimately lost out for the starting job early in the 2013 season to Baker Mayfield, who arrived as a walk-on just as fall practices began. In the third game of the season, however, against rival TCU on Thursday night, an injury to Mayfield on the final play of the fourth quarter forced Webb into action. Up until that point, Webb had played — and not particularly well — during mop-up duty in Stephen F. Austin’s season-opening blast. Still, with the game hanging in the balance following Mayfield’s injury, Webb was no shrinking violet.

“He came in and said something like, ‘Okay, kids, Daddy’s home, let’s go and win this thing!’ said Bradley Marquez, a former Tech wide receiver and close friend of Webb’s. “He just ordered it. Going in, under pressure, he got everybody relaxed and ready to pounce.”

Moments later, Webb hit Marquez for a touchdown to give the Red Raiders the lead. Later, after Tech scored a field goal to extend the lead to 10 points, he was on the sidelines practicing his victory lap, no details.

“He always had a lot of time and effort to make sure things were right,” Morris said.

Still, Webb had to learn how to tailor his message. Morris said the quarterback has mastered Kingsbury’s system so quickly that he sometimes gets frustrated with teammates who aren’t in the right position for not understanding the concepts of the scheme. He learned that a one-size-fits-all approach to correcting errors does not work.

“I think this comes across the wrong way,” Morris said. But now that I’m around him, he looks very mature. He knows how to channel that and deliver information in a way that people want to listen to that information.

Webb honed that skill during his playing career. Josh Allen played safety on the scout team in Buffalo to make sure he was in good shape during practice. In the year When the Bills traded for Stefon Diggs in March 2020 at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, Webb highlighted the team’s new star wide receiver three times a week to help him maintain his playbook in the offseason through OTAs. In Diggs’ first season in Buffalo, he led the NFL with 127 catches and 1,535 yards, both franchise records.

Similarly, Webb helped the new players on the Giants install the playbook when he followed Brian Daboll to New York in 2022, taking on player-coach-type responsibilities that helped him connect with the different personalities on the roster. Spagnuolo recalled last week that when Webb was a starter with the Giants, he would create tape every weekend “more or less to test the quarterbacks and what they could see.”

Broncos wide receivers coach Ronald Curry said watching Webb deliver messages to players in meetings is a perfect balancing act that many young coaches struggle with.

“He doesn’t mind challenging guys,” said Curry, who is in his first year on Denver’s staff after spending the past two seasons as the Bills’ quarterbacks coach. “The way he runs his meetings, you’ve never seen anything like it. He knows how to dress men up and encourage them in the same sentence, and he lights it up. He’s got as much promise as anyone I’ve ever seen.”

Broncos backup quarterback Jarrett Stidham has known Webb for about 15 years. Stedham committed to Texas Tech in 2014 before ultimately signing with Baylor. Later, the two teams would go against quarterbacks late in that campaign. From teammates to other coaches, Stidham has always admired Webb’s obsession with the success of others. It is the principle that guides the teaching style.

“He’s super cerebral and such a smart guy, but he’s a bro,” Stedham said. “That’s one of my favorite qualities about him. He’s for the boys, so to speak. There’s a certain level of accountability that he holds us to, which is amazing because he’s a year older than me. It’s fun because he gets it, and you can really see that he cares about us and wants us to play our best football.”

This season, in addition to position-specific meetings, Webb has created a separate meeting for all skill players. Everyone who touches the ball is an opportunity to talk about “lines or conversations” and voice efforts to make the offense as dangerous as possible, Webb said.

“We all talk about angles and our responsibilities because we all affect each other,” Webb said.

Tight end Adam Trautman said Webb’s “energy ball” delivery in those meetings helped keep things fresh with a veteran-laden team featuring four players who were bigger than the offensive coordinator. At the core of those meetings, however, is accountability for the details.

“The great thing is, he’s on everyone. No one is above the law,” Trautman said. “Especially you have to do that, in my opinion as the youngest play-caller, right? Stop that disrespect right away, draw that line right… We’ll be in offensive meetings, and he’ll say something to Bo, like, ‘This throw isn’t good enough’ or ‘This footwork (is off)’ or whatever, and he does it with everybody.

Webb has made it clear repeatedly that he is leading Peyton’s offense, one Webb helped design as Denver’s quarterbacks coach for the past three seasons. Still, Webb’s hiring as offensive coordinator in February also left him looking for a variety of upgrades to help elevate a team that finished 14th last season.

“I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t think it was going to help us win games,” Peyton repeated after giving Webb the role of play-caller.

Davis Webb is taking over Sean Payton’s Broncos offense and looking to improve as the new play caller. (Ron Chenoy/Imag Images)

Webb took the blame as if he and his crew were rebuilding a car engine, taking out all the parts, putting them on a table, and figuring out how to assemble them to create more torque. Webb detailed how developments in how the Broncos analyzed route overlaps fit perfectly with how the Knicks read the field. Every aspect of the damage was examined under the same microscope.

“We stripped this thing down to the bare bones,” running backs coach Lou Ianni said. “We talked wherever everyone was. What was the best thing we did there? What was the best thing we saw? What resonated with us? What didn’t resonate with us? How can we make this our own? It was a true collaboration.”

Added Curry: “He has no pride in it, he takes information from everyone.”

Now, it’s up to Webb to shift gears in Denver’s rejuvenated offensive engine. His first chance will be on Monday night in the first stage where he has been traveling to a long time.

“We’ll let it rip as time goes by, but right now there are butterflies for everyone,” Webb said. I think it’s like the first time a player hits or (completions) he’s getting the first play call and then we roll.