The Broncos made another round of front-office promotions this summer, naming Kelly Kleine Van Calligan and Tony Lazzaro vice presidents, along with a handful of other moves.
Van Calligan, who is entering her 14th NFL season overall and 13th working for general manager George Paton, has been promoted to vice president of football operations. She is the second-highest ranking woman in NFL team personnel after Cleveland assistant general manager and vice president of football operations Catherine Hickman.
Lazzaro is entering his 25th year working for the Broncos and was recently promoted to vice president of football technology and research. Lazzaro will oversee the entire football analytics department.
The new titles are listed on the team’s updated online staff directory — a low-key acknowledgment for a pair of respected, veteran employees.
The moves come a couple of months after Paton finalized a sweeping series of hires and promotions in his front office, led by promoting Reed Burckhardt to assistant general manager to replace now-New York Jets GM Darren Mougey.
Paton had a busy offseason after losing Mougey and several others to roles with teams around the country, and he mixed in internal promotions with a couple of outside hires, including co-director of player personnel Cam Williams and director of pro personnel Jordon Dizon.
Now comes another round of promotions.
Van Calligan first began working with Paton as an intern in 2013 and has steadily worked her way up through the front office ranks. When Paton got the general manager job here in 2021, he inherited a talented set of scouts and brought two key employees along with him from the Vikings: Van Calligan and Burckhardt.
Van Calligan interviewed in early 2024 for the Las Vegas Raiders’ general manager posting. In her new role, she’ll serve as the primary liaison to the football operations staff while continuing to work in both pro and college scouting.
The Broncos didn’t hire a one-to-one replacement for departed vice president of football operations and compliance Mark Thewes when he left this offseason for the Raiders, but Van Calligan now has a football operations title. She and a handful of others have assumed the duties Thewes oversaw.
“She’s involved in everything,” Paton told The Post in 2021 after Van Calligan joined Denver’s front office. “She is a liaison to a lot of different departments for me. She’s in charge of a number of things and is a sounding board for me.”
Broncos head coach Sean Payton regularly commends Lazzaro’s work, both in terms of on-field data and research, and also in the scouting and draft realms.
“We have a receiver every year that we look at who’s 5-foot-11 and 160 pounds,” Payton said earlier this month, pulling one example of how data analytics come into play regularly. “To Tony, I’ll say, ‘Put up the last 30 years of receivers under the weight of 165 pounds.’ When the list goes up, you look at it and you say, ‘All right, are we in that business?’
“The personnel side of things, it’s extremely valuable.”
In addition to the VP appointments, the Broncos also promoted Sae Woon Jo from Western national scout to national scout and Rob Simpson to football administration and strategy manager.
Want more Broncos news? Sign up for the Broncos Insider to get all our NFL analysis.