While some players might object to a position change, Damani Leech embraced it.
It was 1994, and Leech had arrived on Princeton’s campus as a promising wide receiver hoping to bolster the Tigers offense. Defensive coordinator Steve Verbit, short on talent in the secondary, had other plans.
So he turned to Leech — now the Broncos team president — and delivered a candid message to the Tacoma, Wash., native on his second day of camp.
“If you want to play, get in that line over there,” Verbit said. “If not, you can stay at wide receiver.”
Leech didn’t hesitate.
A few hiccups followed, including a flea-flicker vs. Harvard that fooled him as a freshman — “My teammates get together, and that play inevitably gets brought up,” Leech told The Denver Post — but his ability to adapt won the day.
In four years with the Tigers, he was a three-time first-team All-Ivy League selection while recording 20 career interceptions.
That willingness to take on a new challenge has become a defining characteristic of Leech’s career — including his two years with the Broncos.
Since Leech was hired in August 2022, succeeding Joe Ellis after seven years in the league office, he’s been at the forefront of the Walton-Penner ownership group’s efforts to rebuild the Broncos brand.
From new uniforms and a soon-to-be revamped training facility to stadium upgrades and exploring the possibility of a new one, Leech is now an agent of change. And he couldn’t be more comfortable.
“It’s been energizing to come into this role, almost two years ago, and hit the ground running,” Leech said. “We talk about being the best team to cheer for, play for and work for, and live in that every day.”
“1,000-piece puzzle”
Growing up, Leech was a creative kid who enjoyed building things with Legos.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, he began solving jigsaw puzzles. He has a small corner in the basement of his home near Denver’s Observatory Park where he pieces together 1,000- to 2,000-piece puzzles — a hobby that’s therapeutic but also satisfies his need to challenge himself.
Leech said his job as Denver’s president has been a “1,000-piece puzzle that’s constantly changing,” with each project more complex than the next.
The revamping of the team’s training facility at Dove Valley,expanding the space by more than 30% over two years, is one of them. So, too, was the redesign of the Broncos’ uniforms, unveiled this past April.
Leech said it was rewarding to see the finished product and the warm reception from fans after the team shifted from uniforms that had been a staple of the organization for 27 years and represented three Super Bowl victories.
Change is hard but needed, said Leech. Even more so when you’re talking about a historic NFL franchise, rooted in tradition. That’s why Leech encourages his staff to be thoughtful about what was done in the past while understanding that it’s important to explore new ways to keep fans entertained.
“It’s our shared responsibility to not take for granted the great fan base we have,” Leech said. “To have over 100,000 people on the season-ticket waiting list (and) 98% season-ticket renewals, it would be easy to kick your feet up and say ‘We’re good.’ But no, we cannot do that.”
Among Leech’s laundry list of tasks is figuring out what’s next for the team’s stadium.
Last year, the team spearheaded $100 million in upgrades to Empower Field at Mile High in the largest capital improvement in the stadium’s 22-year history. Among the stadium enhancements was a new scoreboard that is now the fifth-largest in the NFL. But that investment is no guarantee Empower Field will remain the team’s home for the foreseeable future.
The team remains in the “fact-gathering phase” of figuring out whether to build a new stadium or keep improving the current one.
Leech said the organization has conducted focus groups with more than 100 fans and sponsors. The Broncos also received around 13,000 responses from a survey on the stadium and game-day experience.
“The same approach we took on the future training facility (and) uniforms, we’ll take that as we figure out what our future stadium situation is,” Leech said.
The organization has looked to other venues for inspiration. For Leech, it’s important to be curious and open. “What’s happening in other sports? What’s happening in arts and entertainment? Because a lot of these venues are really about entertaining fans,” he said. “…The fans are the boss. That’s why we survey so much.”
When the Broncos played the Chargers last winter, Leech took a hard-hat tour of the Intuit Dome — the new home of the Los Angeles Clippers that opened Aug. 15 and will serve as the basketball venue for the 2028 Summer Olympics.
“That’s a 5,000-piece, 3D puzzle, with no pictures and different sizes. But I’m excited to do that puzzle,” Leech said.
“He wanted to be better tomorrow than he was today”
All these years later, Leech, 48, still misses the euphoria of running across the field and bonding with teammates. A group chat with former Princeton players keeps him connected to his playing days.
“What I don’t miss are the workouts (and) the two-a-days,” Leech laughed.
Leech participated in numerous sports growing up. His dad, Charles, often picked up used sports equipment at garage sales and brought it back home for Leech and his siblings. “His whole thing was (we had) no excuse to not be outside playing sports,” he said.
Of course, football was the one Leech gravitated to. He started playing Pop Warner football in elementary school and enjoyed watching Raiders running back Bo Jackson and the Washington Huskies, coached by Don James.
A connection to the Huskies helped fuel Leech’s rise at Princeton. His father was close friends with the father of former Washington defensive backs coach Ron Milus, who currently works for the Colts in the same role. Charles pushed his son to go work out with the team when he’d return home to Tacoma in the offseason. And those hours spent with the Huskies kept Leech a step ahead of the Ivy League competition.
“It was consequential to my development to go up against a guy like (former Washington and NFL wideout) Jerome Pathon,” Leech said. “When I got to camp at Princeton, it was easier.”
Verbit, now in his 39th season at Princeton, could spend all day telling stories about Leech. The memory of Leech going parallel to the ground to secure an interception still brings a smile to his face.
“He was the type of guy that wanted to be better tomorrow than he was today,” Verbit told The Post. “Probably like he wants the Broncos to be better.”
Still, Leech wasn’t entirely regimented. There were times he and Princeton’s other defensive backs would sneak cupcakes and doughnuts in their duffel bags at away games, flouting Verbit’s edict to avoid dessert the night before a game.
“All the defensive backs, led by Damani, would run back to their rooms and chow away,” Verbit said. “I found out about that just a few years ago.”
“I can’t believe he remembered that,” Leech said.
Hans Schroeder, who played two seasons with Leech, said that his former teammate carried himself with a quiet air of confidence. Schroeder was a junior during Leech’s first year at Princeton and thought the freshman was an “exceptional athlete.” As he got to know Leech through meetings, he saw a selfless player who worked as hard as anyone.
Leech dabbled in investment banking for a few summers in college. But the job didn’t quite fit. Charles and Leech’s mother, Eliza, encouraged him to find something he would enjoy.
So twice a week, Leech worked in the mailroom at Ivy League Conference headquarters in Princeton. After he graduated with a bachelor of arts in public policy and international affairs in 1998, he interned with the PGA Tour.
That eventually turned into an internship with the NCAA and his ascent to the organization’s managing director of championships from 2013 to ’15. There, he helped with rebranding the College World Series and the development of a $140 million stadium to host the event in Omaha, Neb.
Leech transitioned to the NFL office in 2015 as the vice president of football strategy and business development. From 2019 to ’22, he was the chief operating officer of NFL International and was heavily involved in expanding the league’s international games.
“When he worked at the league office, I joked with (five-time Pro Bowler and executive vice president of football operations) Troy Vincent … that Damani was the best (defensive back) in the building,” said Schroeder, now the executive vice president and chief operating officer of NFL Media.
“If you see it, you can be it”
When Leech accepted the job with the Broncos, moving his wife, Tamara, and two daughters, Brianna and Simone, from New Jersey to Colorado, it came with greater significance than his daily duties.
Leech is one of four Black team presidents in the NFL, a small group that includes Baltimore’s Sashi Brown, Las Vegas’ Sandra Douglass Morgan and Chicago’s Kevin Warren.
Leech takes pride in being a part of that small group. At the same time, he and Brown hope to see the day when that’s no longer a part of the conversation.
“That’s the goal,” Leech said. “For it to be about who I am and what I’ve accomplished and less about somebody’s race and gender.”
The league has made strides to that end. This fall, there will be nine head coaches of color (six Black) — the most in league history — and nine general managers (seven Black).
However, there are no Black majority team owners. According to the league’s yearly diversity and inclusion report, 19% of the head coaching hires from 2012 to 2023 were people of color.
“It’s meaningful to me (and) around the industry and society at large,” Brown told The Post. “Unfortunately, there’s still a lot of examples of first and seconds, and far too little representation in different spaces.”
In 2018, Leech helped launch the Black Engagement Network at the league office to strengthen the NFL’s connection to its Black employees and commitment to diversity. Leech earned the NFL Commissioner’s Award for his efforts.
As with so many other things in his life, it was a change Leech was more than willing to embrace.
“I very much believe in the ‘If you see it, you can be it’ philosophy,” he said. “I understand there are people who are early in their careers (and) trying to figure out what they want to do. Seeing someone like me, I understand there’s value in that.”
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Originally Published: September 3, 2024 at 5:45 a.m.
