Zach Strief was selected by Sean Payton and the New Orleans Saints in the seventh round of the 2006 NFL draft out of Northwestern. The offensive lineman went on to start 94 games from 2006-2017, splitting time between guard and tackle.
After hanging up his cleats following the 2017 season, Strief initially transitioned to broadcasting, serving as a play-by-play announcer for Saints games. Four years later, Payton asked him to join New Orleans as an assistant coach.
“Zach obviously played for us and then coached for me,” Payton said at the NFL owners’ meetings in Arizona last week. “He’s one of the few former players that moved from playing and went into the play-by-play booth, not the color [analyst] booth. All of us were [impressed], but none of us were surprised that pretty soon he did it pretty well. I was calling him about a coach when I was in New Orleans, and he told me what I wanted to hear. I was hiring a line coach, and then I was going to hire an assistant line coach.
“The next day he called me back and said, ‘Hey, I’d be interested in the assistant line job.’ I said, ‘I thought you were play-by-play guy?’ He said, ‘I want to be a line coach.’ I said, ‘Alright. Come in tomorrow.’ I hired him the next day. There are certain people you get to come across in your lifetime that you just know are achievers, and that you know whatever it is that they don’t know, they’ll figure out quickly and be successful. He’s one of those people. It just so happens that he had a long career of playing offensive line.”
Strief served as an assistant with the Saints from 2021-2022 and he will now get a promotion to head offensive line coach in Denver. Strief was a priority target for Payton when he built his Broncos coaching staff.
“[H]e was a target,” Payton said. “Wherever I went, if I was able to, I [wanted] to hire him as the line coach. You guys will enjoy getting to know him. He’s a pretty special person.”
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