LONDON — Despite a powerful hankering to be a head coach in the NFL again, Vance Joseph knows blind ambition is the worst way to chase a second chance.

“God willing, I will be a head coach again,” Joseph told me Thursday, as we stood on a soccer pitch where the Broncos are practicing this week. “I want the opportunity to be a head coach again, but it has to be in the right place.” 

As coordinator of the fast and furious Denver defense, which leads the league with 84 quarterback sacks since 2024, Joseph’s stock is on the rise.

At age 53, he’s far wiser than when he let John Elway push him around during a frustrating two-season stint as Denver’s head coach from 2017-18, when he got unceremoniously canned for losing 21 of 32 games.

But know what’s maybe the most important thing he has learned about this crazy business? Only a fool looks before he leaps into a bad situation, because not all NFL head coaching vacancies are created equal.

“There are only 32 of these jobs in the NFL, so every opening is good,” Joseph said.

There is, however, one huge caveat. There are bad NFL jobs where even a tough and smart football coach is doomed to failure from Day One.

“Most NFL jobs you’d be taking are with teams that are broken. and you have to go fix them,” Joseph said. “It can be tough to fix. That’s why four or five NFL head coaching jobs open up every single year. And the thing is, it’s usually the same jobs again and again.”

In a league where a failed head coach seldom gets more than one second chance, an old friend saved Joseph from blowing his shot at redemption in a dead-end job with the gosh-awful New York Jets.

“I did interview with the Jets in January,” Joseph said.

After leading a defense that ranked among the league’s top three in points allowed last season, Joseph was among a cattle call of at least 16 candidates the Jets chatted with during the search for their fourth head coach since 2015.

The vacancy was filled by Detroit Lions defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn, whom Joseph has known for 30 years, since he was an undrafted rookie out of CU learning the secrets of playing defensive back from Glenn, a first-round draft choice of the Jets in 1994.

“I thought Aaron was a great pick as coach for the Jets,” Joseph said, “because he played for them, and that should buy him some time with fan support in order for him to turn things around.”

When Joseph looks across the field on Sunday at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, however, he will see Glenn trying to break the NFL’s only winless team from a funk that has plagued the franchise since its last playoff appearance in January 2011.

“We’re 0-5 and we own it,” Glenn said.

The impatience that quickly festers with losing cost Joseph any chance to grow into an effective coach in Denver.

Elway gave him the job with too many strings attached, tried to replace Joseph after only one year in an unsuccessful dalliance with former Broncos coach Mike Shanahan and fired V.J. when Denver ended the 2018 season with four consecutive losses.

Experience is a cruel but effective creature, especially when there are scars to remind how quick, hard and painful a head coach’s fall from grace can be.

“The second time around, at least for me, you know the pitfalls that await before you take the job. The first time around, you have no idea what the pitfalls are, because you have no idea what’s inside that cupboard. You only know what a team showed you during the interview process and what you’ve heard from around the league. But you don’t really know what’s there until you take the job,” Joseph said.

“The second time around, it allows you to go into the job with a more detailed idea of what it should look like. Hopefully you have more say in terms of personnel and have enough power to do it your way.”

From the New York Giants to the Miami Dolphins to the Cleveland Browns, there are embattled head coaches already on the hot seat in 2025.

With Denver edge-rusher Nik Bonitto looking like a strong candidate to succeed teammate Pat Surtain as the league’s Defensive Player of the Year, Joseph figures to be a strong candidate to fix the mess anywhere from Miami to Cleveland.

“Right now,” Joseph said, “I’m focused on the Broncos. I have a great job, so I’m not overly concerned with what head coaching jobs might be out there. If it happens, it happens.”

His second chance is coming.

And, this time, V.J. is determined to do it his way. 

“It has to be,” Joseph said, “the right fit.”