Broncos Announce Head Coach: John Fox

To the surprise of nobody, the breaking news came in through Twitter.

Though it had roughly been an hour since the Denver Post reported that the team had trimmed their list with candidates from five to three, on Thursday afternoon John Elway tweeted that the Broncos had officially agreed to terms with former Panthers head coach John Fox to become the 14th head coach in Broncos history.

Elway stated on Twitter: ""Coach Fox is a great fit for us not only with his coaching ability but also with his personality. He's a dynamic and proven leader. He's coached great defenses, turned teams around and been to Super Bowls. We couldn't be more excited to have him lead our football team."

After the first round of interviews concluded on Wednesday, many members of the media speculated that Rick Dennison looked to be the front runner for the job. It was thus surprising that the team announced the signing yesterday, without conducting a second round of interviews with their favorite candidates.

When Fox became the Panthers head coach in 2001, the team just came off an abysmal 1-15 season. Two years later, the Panthers appeared in the Super Bowl. Overall, Fox recorded a 73-71 record as coach of the Carolina Panthers, which includes a 2-14 record this past season in which Fox practically knew from the beginning of the season that he would not return once the season ended.

Per Steve Reed of CarolinaGrowl.com, two coaches that could follow Fox to Denver are Panthers wide receivers coach Tyke Tolbert and offensive line coach Dave Magazu. Under Magazu, the Panthers offensive line created running lanes for the first team in history to have two running backs with more than 1.100 rushing yards. He has been running a zone blocking scheme and if he would accept the position in Denver it would likely mean that the team will switch back to the scheme that it was used to running before Josh McDaniels took over in 2009.

Jason La Canfora of NFL.com and the NFL Network suggested that former Seattle Seahawks headcoach Jim Mora could be a candidate for the defensive coordinator position, and Fox might be looking to talk to Washington's Danny Smith to become the next special teams coach.

Those names, however, are pure speculation at this time. We will likely find out more about the other changes to the staff during or after the weekend.

Watch the press conference today at noon MST live on http://www.denverbroncos.com.