At 3 a.m., March 12, exactly 12 hours before the floodgates opened on free agency, general manager George Paton‘s right-hand man was zipping to the hospital.
The Broncos’ war room was already stretched thin, trusted generals recently gone from Dove Valley after years of service. Heading into a pivotal offseason stretch, Paton had no assistant general manager after Darren Mougey left for the Jets. Executive director of football operations, Kelly Kleine Van Calligan, was on maternity leave. VP of football operations Mark Thewes left for the Raiders. Heck, Mougey poached Paton’s nephew away for a scouting job in New York.
Then, in the faint hours before sunrise, Paton got a text from director of player personnel Reed Burckhardt: a picture of him and wife Julia’s newborn daughter, Cecilia.
“You couldn’t have picked a — just, the timing was so unique,” Burckhardt said in a conversation with The Denver Post months later. “Because it wasn’t Day Three (of free agency). It wasn’t Day Five. It was literally Day One.”
This was no simple absence. This was a Paton loyalist since his days in Minnesota, who now led the Paton-and-pro-personnel braintrust. And as free agency broke, Burckhardt was helping run operations on a laptop inside Julia’s hospital room.
They already had the big points sketched out, though. In fall 2024, now-pro personnel director AJ Durso keyed in on San Francisco 49ers safety Talanoa Hufanga, whose contract was set to expire in the offseason. And they entered free agency with a plan coordinated by Burckhardt, from Durso to the Broncos’ scouts to cap guru Rich Hurtado to Paton.
When Hufanga agreed to terms with Denver on March 26, was Burckhardt excited enough that he woke baby Cecilia up?
“A little bit,” Burckhardt grinned.
“He was — man, Huf was, I don’t want to say he was the key to the whole thing,” Burckhardt continued, slightly later. “But he was certainly a high target.”
The Broncos hit on most of their targets, despite that thin front office. In came Hufanga’s teammate Dre Greenlaw, tight end Evan Engram, and special-teams gunner Trent Sherfield, a signing Burckhardt emphasized Denver was “really excited about.” A month and a half later, Paton tabbed Burckhardt to fill Mougey’s spot in a necessary personnel reshuffle.
In June, Burckhardt sat on a bench off to the side of the Broncos’ facility in Dove Valley and waved a hand out at the grass. Something like this, he gestured, probably seemed out of the realm of possibility growing up. He hails from the 348-person town of Russell, Minn., where the most daring of teenage adventures involved pizza-eating contests at Dar’s Pizza. He played quarterback at FCS South Dakota State, but never started a game.
It’s a small-town story. It’s also precisely why Burckhardt ascended to one of the most prominent decision-making roles in the Broncos’ front office. He is a connector with a disarming Midwestern grin, aligned stably behind Paton and head coach Sean Payton.
And he’s a good enough conductor to carry out a free-agency plan from a hospital room.
“I think Reed’s a star that people don’t even know about yet,” said Paul Roell, the GM of the UFL’s Birmingham Stallions and a former Vikings scout.
“They’re about to find out.”
•••
In the old days of Winter Park, when some of the Vikings offices in Eden Prairie had paneling, the Minnesota staff’s primary league-scouting tool was a massive magnetic wall.
Cards with the names of every player on every NFL roster were slapped on that wall. If a player went on injured reserve, he’d get a red dot pinned on his card. If he were placed on the physically-unable-to-perform list, a yellow dot. If he got released, they’d peel the card off the wall and chuck it in what they called the boneyard.
Dot duties fell to the interns, who were tasked with reading the waiver wire every night and updating the cards. Rick Spielman, who ascended from a player-personnel role to Vikings general manager, impressed upon his interns that this role was of extreme importance. Make a mistake that leads to a mistake on a transaction, and it’s on you, Spielman told them.
“I just wanted to see,” recalled Spielman, now a senior football advisor with the Jets, “if they were willing to do the dirty work.”
Many weren’t. In 2009, Minnesota’s personnel intern quit. Couldn’t handle it. It was their only intern, Paton recalled. They started searching.
“We were like, ‘Man, this dude in ops — I don’t know his name and don’t know much about him, but this guy just works,’” Paton recalled. “‘Maybe they’ll let us use this guy.’”
That was Burckhardt.
Paton quickly learned his name. Many others didn’t. Burckhardt was “understated,” longtime Minnesota scout and personnel executive Jamaal Stephenson said. He developed an old-soul bond with scout Jerry Reichow, a former Vikings receiver in the 1960s and franchise lifer.
They tossed him in the fire, as Paton put it, and Burckhardt emerged unscathed. He could handle the board. And most everything.
“He was a fixer,” Paton said. “Everything he did, he did at a high level.”
The Vikings brought him back the next year — the start of a 15-plus-year attachment to Paton. When Paton was named Broncos general manager in 2021, he was determined to bring two people along: Kleine Van Calligan and Burckhardt.
This offseason, Spielman was a heavy advocate for Mougey in the Jets’ GM search, knowing his front-office role within the Broncos’ gradual culture change. Spielman had a trust in Paton, back when he was his assistant GM in Minnesota. Paton, Spielman sensed, had that same trust in Mougey. And Burckhardt, too.
“I think Reed,” Spielman said, “is going to be a future general manager.”
•••
Years ago, one of the only examples any football hopeful in rural Minnesota had was Todd Bauman — a former Vikings quarterback who grew up in the tiny town of Ruthton.
Naturally, Burckhardt knew him. The Burckhardts knew everyone. And after Burckhardt finished his years at South Dakota State, Bauman called former Vikings director of operations Luther Hippe to recommend Burckhardt for an internship.
“Once he’s there,” Bauman told him, “you’ll fall in love with the guy.”
Russell has no gas station and no stoplights. Burckhardt’s mother, Diane, ran a daycare, and his late father, Keith, worked for the railroad. When Burckhardt traveled with the South Dakota State Jackrabbits for away games, Diane and Keith paid for their own seats on the flight. Diane baked the team cookies. When the softball field in town needed a scoreboard, Keith built a wooden one by hand.
One of Keith Burckhardt’s sayings, still, is burned into Russell Mayor Hilary Buchert’s head.
Don’t be bitter. Be better.
“I feel that Reed really takes that role on and gives the Burckhardts a good name,” Buchert said.
Buchert speculated that most in Russell probably don’t have any idea Burckhardt is now the assistant GM of the Denver Broncos. But the Russell spirit has gotten him to Denver.
Ask many in the old Minnesota building about Burckhardt, and the demeanor sticks out instantly. Bauman’s still never really seen him have a bad day.
“I think George just, maybe — he liked the guy,” Stephenson said.
And as Paton’s “champion,” as Stephenson put it, Burckhardt’s earned head-coach Payton’s public respect, too.
“He’s got a real good eye for talent,” Payton said. “And he’s not afraid to give you his opinion, even if it’s contrary to maybe what you want to hear.”
Payton and Paton have increasingly presented a united front in Broncos decision-making. That’s trickled behind the scenes to a braintrust he’s now in further charge of unifying.
“Their fundamentals of what they believe in — from building a football team, from what makes a good football player — are totally aligned,” Burckhardt said. “And I would say, me being with George … I’m totally aligned. And then, so subsequently, our staff’s totally aligned.
“And so, it’s just, once we get that — then you feel like you’re building something.”
Broncos offseason front-office personnel changes
| Name | Previous Role | New Role |
|---|---|---|
| Reed Burckhardt | Director of Player Personnel | Assistant General Manager |
| Kelly Kleine Van Callaghan | Executive Director of Football Operations/Special Advisor to the General Manager | Executive Director of Football Operations/Special Advisor to the General Manager |
| Cody Rager | Vice President of Player Personnel | Vice President of Player Personnel |
| A.J. Durso | Director of Pro Personnel | Co-Director of Player Personnel |
| Cam Williams | Director of College Scouting (New England Patriots) | Co-Director of Player Personnel |
| Jordon Dizon | National Scout (Philadelphia Eagles) | Director of Pro Personnel |
| Roman Phifer | Senior Personnel Executive | Senior Personnel Executive |
| Bryan Chesin | Midwest National Scout | Director of College Scouting |
| Pat Walsh | Pro Scout | Pro Scout |
| Ish Seisay | Pro/College Scout | Midwest Area/International Scout |
| Ty Murphy | Pro Scout | Pro Scout |
| Nick Schiralli | Assistant Director of College Scouting | Senior Personnel Executive |
| Sae Woon Jo | Western National Scout | Western National Scout |
| Eugene Armstrong | Southeast Area Scout | Southeast Area Scout |
| Dave Bratten | West Area Scout | Assistant Director of College Scouting |
| Scott DiStefano | Senior Midwest Area Scout | Senior College Scout |
| Chaz McKenzie | Northeast Area Scout | Northeast Area Scout |
| Deon Randall | Southwest Area Scout | National Scout |
| Roya Burton | Scouting Coordinator | Player Personnel Coordinator/Scout |
| Pam Papsdorf | Personnel Logistics Manager | Personnel Logistics Manager |
| Rob Simpson | Football Administration Coordinator | Football Administration Coordinator |
(Click here to view chart in mobile.)
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