Ryan Aplin put his foot down.
Logan Kilgore, in Aplin’s mind, was gnawing on a bad idea.
“Dude,” Aplin implored. “You cannot do this.”
In early 2021, Kilgore’s playing career was finished, he told Aplin, and he wanted to get into coaching.
Kilgore maybe could have linked up with his former college coach, Rick Stockstill, but Stockstill counseled him to try to expand his network.
He turned to Aplin, a former rival Sun Belt quarterback and by-now longtime friend, and asked about getting in with him and new Arkansas State head coach Butch Jones.
The hiring cycle had already passed, though, and Aplin told Kilgore he didn’t think they had anything.
Maybe next year.
Then Kilgore called again. He’d talked to his wife, Brookey.
“I really want to get in,” Kilgore said, as Aplin recalled recently. “We saved a little bit of money and I’m willing to work for free.”
Aplin tried to talk him out of it.
“I’m like, Kilgore. Logan. We are not doing that, dude,” Aplin said. “You’re not going to ask Ms. Brookey to move from California to Jonesboro, Arkansas. No shot.”
Kilgore, though, refused to take no for an answer. He insisted. Any chance, any role would do. No pay required.
Aplin and Kilgore had been friends since they played against each other in college — Aplin for Arkansas State and Kilgore at Middle Tennessee State — and worked the Manning Passing Academy together. Aplin knew his buddy knew ball. “He’ll be the best guy we have off the field,” Aplin thought then. He also knew that if Kilgore was dead set on something, he’d find a way.
It took time, but Aplin eventually talked Jones and offensive coordinator Keith Heckendorf into letting Kilgore in the building. Part of the sales job was adding to a just-finalized, carefully selected staff. The other was convincing them that Kilgore really knew he was signing up to move on his own and work for free.
Finally, they said yes.
“We kind of make-shifted my desk, moved my desk back, brought in half a desk for him and we worked in the same office for a whole year,” Aplin said.
Five years later, Logan Kilgore is on the rocketship ride. The 35-year-old is Sean Payton’s new quarterbacks coach in Denver. He’s a key piece of a retooled Broncos staff with Super Bowl ambitions in 2026; the man tasked with coaching Bo Nix to the NFL’s upper echelon.
The move might have come as a surprise to some, given Kilgore was a quality control coach working with tight ends and returners the past three years. Those who know him best, though, say this was only a matter of time. And it may be just the beginning.
“There’s certain people that would put a lot of weight on resume and experience and this and that,” QB Country founder and longtime quarterback trainer David Morris said recently. “Then there’s people that are just stars. Logan has star power. …
“I don’t think it’s going to be the end of his ascension.”
A formative experience
That Kilgore ever became a prolific college quarterback in the first place was unlikely enough.
He never started a game in high school at Jesuit High in Sacramento, instead backing up Dominic Carmazzi — the son of longtime coach Dan Carmazzi — for his entire tenure.
He slugged his way up the depth chart and to the starting job at juco Bakersfield College, where he caught Stockstill’s eye from a couple of time zones away.
Kilgore redshirted at Middle Tennessee State in 2010, but made his presence felt quickly.
“His leadership skills were on display early in his career,” Stockstill said. “Even in 2010, when he only played in a couple of games, you could see the impact he was having within our team.”
Kilgore, who was not made available for an interview by the Broncos for this story, then started three seasons for Stockstill and over 36 games threw for 7,309 yards and 50 touchdowns.
That performance, among other things, helped him land a counselor position at the Manning Passing Academy for three summers.
Kilgore and Aplin recognized each other there from sharing a conference and hit it off.
Aplin raved about the experience more than a decade later, recalling Archie, Peyton, Eli and Cooper Manning all sitting in a room, talking with the young quarterbacks and taking questions. Archie would cruise around in a golf cart, taking in the camp. Peyton plopped down with Kilgore, Aplin and Louisiana-Lafayette’s Blaine Gautier — far from the biggest names at the camp — one night and had dinner with them.
It all left an impression.
So, too, did Kilgore.
“He struck up a relationship with the Mannings,” Stockstill said.
This is a common happening for Kilgore. People who meet him like him. They want to be around him. They gravitate toward him. They’re inclined to seek him out for a good time, for advice or to see if they can help.
“He has an optimism and an eagerness that is authentic and it’s one of these things that, no matter the situation or the room or the group of people that he’s around, he’s going to bring some energy to it and optimism to it,” Morris said. “He’s kind of a light spirit and I think that goes a long way at the quarterback position.”
Morris and Kilgore met around the same time. Morris had just launched QB Country and had Kilgore as part of his first true draft preparation class along with Alabama’s A.J. McCarron.
Kilgore knew he’d likely go undrafted. He ended up with several teams interested in signing him as a free agent, but one stood out above the rest: Sean Payton and the New Orleans Saints.
He only spent that offseason there before playing in the CFL for a half-decade, but planted seeds that would blossom nearly 10 years later.
“That’s where the relationship started,” Aplin said. “For a free agent to go in there and make the impact on the head coach and keep that relationship despite not having spent multiple years on the team, that tells you about the person. Especially with a guy like Sean, where the football IQ is through the roof.”
New Orleans, of course, also happens to be homebase for the Mannings.
Arch-type
Kilgore found a rhythm during the 2021 season at Arkansas State.
He batted ideas around with Aplin and talked ball.
He did basically whatever the staff needed.
Among his responsibilities was to advance teams ahead on Arkansas State’s schedule. They’d play Saturday and then on Sunday, Kilgore would present the next opponent to the staff.
“He’d come in and give a full report on them,” Jones said. “Not just personnel, but schematics. There’d be an accompanying video. Just the work ethic and the pride and the attention to detail he put into that, 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.”
Along the way, Kilgore’s phone rang.
It was Peyton Manning.
He wanted to know if Kilgore had an interest in coaching his nephew, Arch, at Isidore Newman High in New Orleans.
Arch was going to be a senior in high school and was already a megaprospect, recruited by every major program in the country.
Kilgore considered the offer, talked it through with Jones and others, and ultimately jumped at it.
“We were all kind of surprised, like, why the hell would he want to come coach 2A football for a year?” Arch Manning, now the starter at the University of Texas and a likely top NFL Draft prospect in 2027, told The Post. “I remember we had a call and I was like, ‘This is the guy we need.’ We were speaking the same language. He could help me grow. He had already broken down all of our film that year and was saying how he could help us.
“It was a no-brainer.”
Kilgore had strategic reasons for wanting the job. He’d have every college coach in America coming to his office to talk about Arch. He’d meet all kinds of football people. He’d expand the network.
More than that, though, he relished the chance to push a guy known as the best at his level.
“He wanted the expectations that come along with coaching and developing a player like Arch Manning and the scrutiny that would come along with that,” Jones said. “That’s him.”
Kilgore already knew the Mannings, including Arch’s dad, Cooper, and grandfather Archie, well and clearly had earned their collective trust.
He got to campus and got to work with Arch, building an offense and a base of fundamentals “from the ground up,” Arch recalled.
This was not going to be summer camp. Arch had his pick of colleges, but Kilgore put him through the gauntlet anyway.
“He’d been through it, so I asked him a million questions,” Arch said. “Just to have him for support throughout the crazy recruiting process, I asked him for advice on that. He helped me grow as a player and as a person. It was good.
“I like to think we were friends, too, but he would get on my ass and coach me and hold me to a standard. Which I appreciated because I needed it.”
Arch, back then, would too frequently ease into practice. Kilgore noticed.
“I’d miss a few throws early or my feet wouldn’t be real warm early and then I’d get better as practice would go along,” Arch said. “He’d tell me, ‘We’ve got to start fast.’ So I’ve always taken that to the college level but I definitely remember it from him.”
Payton’s plan
Payton resigned from the New Orleans job after the 2021 season and was still working for Fox late 2022 as Kilgore weighed his next move after Isidore Newman.
He figured Payton would try to get back in the NFL, Aplin said, but couldn’t exactly wait around to find out.
Jones hired him back to coach Arkansas State’s tight ends in December. Less than two months later, Payton landed the Broncos job.
Kilgore got the call and packed for Denver.
He worked the past three years mostly with tight ends and returners as a quality control coach, but the football world once again showed just how small it can be.
Payton, of course, had known Kilgore since 2014.
Peyton Manning lives in Denver and is a regular around the facility and the organization.
After Kilgore’s first year, he got tabbed to work the Senior Bowl in Mobile, Alabama.
Morris, who also trains Arch Manning, reached out and told Kilgore to keep an eye on another one of his guys: Oregon quarterback Bo Nix.
“I remember that week I told Logan, ‘Hey, take care of Bo this week,’” Morris said. “And I told Bo just how good of a guy Logan is and how much Bo was going to love the energy that he has.”
Two years later, Kilgore is Nix’s position coach.
Payton knew somewhere along the way he’d either lose quarterbacks coach Davis Webb to another team or to an internal promotion.
Last month, Payton promoted Webb to offensive coordinator and later announced that Webb will serve as the team’s primary play-caller. In a move that got substantially less fanfare, Payton also promoted Kilgore.
“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.”
To a casual observer, the move might have looked a little odd.
“You don’t know his story and it looks like he doesn’t have a real long sheet of coaching career,” Aplin said. “But when you peel back the layers, you’re like holy (crap). This guy has (expletive) done it. And every place he’s ever gone, he’s made that place better.”
Several people around Kilgore and the Broncos said he had the quarterbacks coach job in his sights all along. They also figure Payton knew Kilgore would be the next man up, or at least that he anticipated Kilgore would earn it along the way.
“Sean knows him a lot better than just two years or three years,” Stockstill said.
Added Jones, “Sean Payton does not do anything by chance. Everything he does is very calculated. I guarantee you the way Sean looked at it is that Logan had a three-year interview process. … When you’re in the building, every single day is a job interview.”
‘That’s my guy’
Arch Manning has faced an unending deluge of attention for years.
He tries to avoid extra interviews if he can help it.
When the 21-year-old quarterback called a reporter on a recent Wednesday night, though, he made clear why.
“I’ll always talk about Logan because that’s my guy,” Manning said. “He taught me so much. … I still call him. I still ask him for advice.”
When Kilgore got promoted, Manning fielded a FaceTime call from Nix, who was interested in what to expect from the new guy at the front of his position group.
“Logan’s the guy you want to play golf with and get a beer with, but he’s also a hell of a coach and he’ll hold you to a high standard,” Arch Manning said. “I can’t say enough good things about him. … When someone has a passion for the sport and for their job, you can feel it. That’s why I know all those guys in Denver will love him. He’s excited to come to work every day. He can (B.S.) with you, but he can also get on your ass.
“They’re going to love him and there’s no doubt he’s going to do a hell of a job.”
Morris has known both for years and believes it’s a strong match.
“Logan’s going to coach Bo hard,” he said. “He’s going to continue to challenge him and grow him. He deeply cares about people and that’s important. There’s all kind of opinions out there on player and coach relationships and all that. Some of it’s real and some of it’s B.S. But Logan’s going to love Bo and Bo’s going to love him back. That matters. That really matters.
“Those guys are going to really trust each other and that’s important when you’re trying to win a championship.”
Morris calls Kilgore supremely confident but not arrogant and “one of my favorite people in the world.” Aplin calls him “the most emotionally intelligent person I’ve ever been around.” Jones lands on the word authentic. He’s a terrific storyteller. Happy-go-lucky.
“He’s going to walk in the room and he’s going to be confident and not intimidated,” Stockstill said. “He’ll have his plan, hold them accountable and then the big thing with the quarterback position is you’ve got to be a great communicator. If you don’t know something, it’s OK to say, ‘I don’t know.’ He’s not going to try to fluff them and do all that stuff or try to impress them. What you see is what you get. I think he’ll be a great addition to the quarterback room there in Denver.
“I think he’ll do a jam-up job.”
More than one person pointed out a potential future consideration: Arch Manning will be preparing for the draft a year from now and Kilgore could already be an interesting coordinator prospect.
They will only potentially re-unite if Kilgore excels as a quarterbacks coach, but who is going to doubt that at this point? Multiple people in the Broncos building see a parallel between Kilgore and Declan Doyle, who went from Denver tight ends coach to play-calling offensive coordinator in Baltimore in two years.
Payton’s seen this movie before. He acknowledged at the NFL Combine that, “The time clock for these young coaches that are good is quicker than you might think.”
That’s Kilgore so far.
Five years ago, he took a job for free. Four years ago, he became a high school offensive coordinator. Three years ago, he landed a gig as a quality control coach.
He bet on himself. He and his wife, Jones points out, sacrificed more than most might be willing to.
It’s all paid off quite nicely.
“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.”
Want more Broncos news? Sign up for the Broncos Insider to get all our NFL analysis.