Broncos Announce Hiring of Roman Phifer as Senior Personnel Executive

General manager George Paton is reshaping the Denver Broncos' front office in his image. After completing a successful free-agency and NFL draft period with personnel/scouting staff he inherited from John Elway, Paton has quickly set about hiring his key personnel lieutenants to realize his front-office vision in Denver.

On Monday, Paton announced the hiring of ex-Minnesota Vikings' executive Kelly Kleine as executive director of football operations/special advisor to the GM, breaking a glass ceiling in the NFL by making her the highest-ranking female scouting exec ever. On Tuesday, Paton doubled down by hiring ex-Detroit Lions scout Roman Phifer to serve as the team's senior personnel executive.

A former NFL linebacker who won three World Championships with the New England Patriots, Phifer has worked for the Broncos before as an assistant linebackers coach under then-head coach Josh McDaniels from 2009-10. Phifer then washed out of the NFL for a time before landing a job at the collegiate level with the UCLA Bruins as director of player development from 2016-17.

We've agreed to terms with Roman Phifer as Senior Personnel Executive.

Welcome to #BroncosCountry, Roman!

📰 » https://t.co/mAnPRKMJzY pic.twitter.com/sQQGtvlrKo
— Denver Broncos (@Broncos) May 18, 2021

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In 2018, Phifer accepted a job with the Detroit Lions as an area scout, a position he held until Paton's olive-branch promotion up the executive chain to becoming a key personnel executive for the Broncos. As a long-time Vikings executive, Paton likely rubbed elbows with Phifer often at various scouting functions and kept a competitive eye on his divisional rival.

Now, Paton has grafted Phifer into his own front-office fold and the Broncos are better for it. As a former player, Phifer brings a unique perspective to the Broncos' scouting process and has paid his dues as a traveling scout in the NFL covering the West Coast, including California, Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico.

As a 15-year NFL veteran linebacker, Phifer landed in the league as a Los Angeles Rams' second-round pick back in 1991. He went on to have great success as a starter on New England's early-2000s dynasty and earned four Pro Bowl alternate nods.

Similar to the Kleine hire, it's great to see Paton hire a man in Phifer who is eminently qualified but who also helps to break what barriers remain in the NFL for minorities. Historically, I'm not sure a Black man has held that high of an executive role in the Broncos' personnel department. Phifer might now own that distinction.

Team CEO Joe Ellis has been adamant since Elway stepped down as GM in the team's priority of diligently scouring the NFL landscape for minority candidates to fill various front-office and coaching roles.

“I think your organization gets better with diversity, and diversity is a lot of things. It’s people of different race, it’s people with different opinions, it’s people that add value in different ways," Ellis said back in January. "We’re going to interview several black candidates [relative to the GM search]. The Denver Broncos player roster is 75 percent black. We’re getting better at diversity as an organization, but we’re nowhere near where we need to be... It’s just critical to our organization because the thing about it is it makes us better in so many different ways, and we’ve got to recognize that, and we’ve got to improve in that area for sure.”

Mission accomplished? Not quite. There's still a long row left to hoe in order for NFL front-office and head-coaching jobs to accurately reflect the Black demographic of the league's players but Ellis and Paton are taking some massive steps in the right direction.

Follow Chad on Twitter @ChadNJensen.

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