MOBILE, Ala. — More items picked up this week during practices for the Senior Bowl, the college all-star game and NFL draft showcase played on Saturday at Hancock Whitney Stadium on the campus of South Alabama.

Denver Broncos coach Sean Payton was on a quick getaway to Cabo San Lucas when his phone pinged every day he was there: Each time it was a new request from another team considering hiring one of Payton’s assistants. The Naperville Central and Eastern Illinois graduate joked that it was a little irritating, but it was in jest. This has been a big offseason for members of the Payton coaching tree.

Aaron Glenn, hired as the New York Jets head coach, got his first job as a position coach from Payton in 2016 with the New Orleans Saints. The Chicago Bears hired Declan Doyle as offensive coordinator after he worked for two seasons as the Broncos tight ends coach and four before that (three under Payton) as an offensive assistant in New Orleans.

The Detroit Lions hired Broncos passing game coordinator John Morton as their offensive coordinator to replace new Bears coach Ben Johnson. The Jets hired Broncos assistant special teams coach Chris Banjo as their coordinator. Has a team ever supplied three coordinators for other teams in one offseason?

“You take pride in it,” Payton said. “I remember when I first got to New Orleans, Mr. (Tom) Benson (the Saints owner) came in after 2006, we’d lost to the Bears in the (NFC) championship game, and he said, ‘Coach, I don’t like that all the assistants are interviewing for other jobs.’

“I said, ‘Mr. Benson, is that unfamiliar for you?’ I said, ‘You should worry if no one is interested in our assistants.’”

Doyle is interesting because, at 28, he’s the youngest coordinator in the NFL. It’s not the kind of promotion he necessarily was expecting. Neither was Payton, but at the same time, he wasn’t caught off guard that another team would have interest in Doyle.

“I hired him right out of Iowa, sharp, made a good impression,” Payton said. “Came in and he was a good worker. The longer you do this, the more you appreciate coaches that have intelligence but they also wear well in the building. They get along with their staff members.

“Declan is one of those guys that was extremely professional and yet was super smart and therefore super tactful. In other words, he knew the timing of when to interject and maybe when not to as a young coach.”

Quality control coaches will have tells early on if they’re cut out for the business. The jobs are grueling — long hours with lots of demands — and Doyle impressed.

“It happened early,” Payton said. “You observe work ethic and you observe attention to detail. He’d jot me a note at the end of the season. It wasn’t like in any way, shape or form overkill. It was really timely. Tip sheets at the end of each week with the reports and reminders for the tight ends that he would put on my desk.

“He had great insight and I valued his opinion when we got into the installation meetings. This was from a first-year coach.”

Payton described how a successful coach needs to blend his staff with assistants who have different strengths and how Doyle fit in for him.

“You need a combination on your staff,” he said. “Some guys are riveters, some guys are glue guys, some guys are scientists, you know. Declan is one of those scientists. He’s smart. So he would have good scheme ideas that I valued and not everyone has to. You have to have a staff that is mixed up that way. But I would say almost like a machine. I wouldn’t say quiet. Very focused on his players. Very intelligent.

“One of the early signs of inexperience for young coaches is if they try to cover everything. There’s a saying, ‘Only the expert knows what to ignore.’ In other words, the young coach — even myself, I can think back to when I was at Indiana State, and you’ve covered everything and in your mind you check it all off. But the problem is by covering everything, you’ve really covered nothing for the player. Declan had a good teaching skill set and understood that.”

How Doyle will fit in for Johnson remains to be seen, but Payton always has called offensive plays as the head coach, which Johnson plans to do. Doyle won’t have play-calling duties but there will be large responsibilities that come with a bigger title.

“I spoke to Ben for quite a while,” Payton said. “Periodically (as the head coach), you’re going to be down the hallway with the GM or wherever. Occasionally you get pulled from that offensive meeting and you want the tempo of the meeting to still continue. You don’t want everyone to go on a pee break and wait for you to come back.

“Declan will do a great job working closely with Ben, keeping him up to speed when there are times when Ben will get pulled from an offseason meeting or an in-season meeting. That inevitably happens.”

Bears GM Ryan Poles had pressing business at this time last year: He had to use the franchise tag as a means toward hammering out a four-year, $76 million extension with cornerback Jaylon Johnson. While there isn’t the same kind of urgency in terms of a timeline to pay nickel cornerback Kyler Gordon, don’t be surprised if the Bears work on a new contract for Gordon this offseason.

Gordon, a second-round pick in 2022 from Washington, has one year remaining on his rookie contract, and it stands to reason the Bears would like to have him in the fold moving forward. It was notable when Ben Johnson named Gordon as one of the bright spots on the roster at his introductory news conference.

The Bears have plenty of cap space this offseason, and it makes all the sense in the world to use a chunk of that to secure Gordon. Remember, teams with an abundance of cap space usually do best when they use it to prevent their own players from leaving via free agency.

“I haven’t really talked about (an extension) a lot, but people have brought it up to me a couple times,” Gordon told me just before the end of the season, indicating he’s open to hearing what the team might have in mind.

The Bears feel like Gordon was more valuable than his statistics suggest. He finished with 75 tackles, four tackles for a loss, a half-sack, five pass deflections, one forced fumble and three fumble recoveries. Reality is a lot of weeks the ball just didn’t come his way. Tough to pile up numbers if the action is away from you.

“People are not going at him anymore,” former Bears nickel backs coach David Overstreet said. “Nobody throws at him. He’s not getting targets like he was getting before and that’s a credit to him. It’s a sign of respect. Even now in the run game, they’re motioning people out to pull him out. It’s a respect thing.”

Where things will get interesting for the Bears and Gordon is the valuation of a new contract. The top cornerbacks are getting close to $20 million per season or more. Johnson is one of 11 averaging $19 million or more. The ceiling for slot cornerbacks is about half of that.

The Jets’ Michael Carter II and the Buffalo Bills’ Taron Johnson each signed three-year, $30.75 million contracts ($10.25 million annual average) last year, moving just ahead of the Indianapolis Colts’ Kenny Moore, who is on a three-year, $30 million deal.

You’d imagine that’s a ballpark range for what Gordon can get. Usually the team hopes to get a little discount for paying a player early because it inherits injury risk. Gordon is aware of the disparity in pay for nickel cornerbacks versus those who line up on the outside.

“I’m an everything,” Gordon said. “I’m not just a nickel. I go inside, outside. Sometimes you will see Jaylon go down and I play outside corner. Really anything.

“That (pay difference) is crazy because to me I feel like I play three positions, really four positions almost. I feel like I play linebacker, safety, nickel and corner. It’s crazy to think that doesn’t get incorporated. That’s just what the business is.”

Coaches said Gordon elevated his game the last two years with a better understanding of film study and the long hours it takes to find tells from the offense. Diagnosing what happens — especially on the inside, where there’s more traffic and more going on — requires instincts, and the Bears feel good about where Gordon is.

It’s impossible to say what kind of timeline there could be for a deal to get done, especially with no deadline to spur action.