G_Money
12-31-2008, 10:13 AM
That sound you hear is that of jaws dropping around the league. This move caught just about everyone off-guard. Mike Shanahan was thought to be unassailable in his ivory tower, looming large over Broncoland – overseeing every aspect of the organization, hiring and firing at will, and always planning his next ascent up the NFL mountain.
Until Pat Bowlen believed the Tower of Babel had grown too tall, cast too big a shadow, had grown too insular and brought it all crashing down.
It might have been overlooked, as Bowlen himself gave the title of Broncos Coach For Life to Shanahan, but Pat is every inch the competitive soul that Jerry Jones is. He is easy to forget since he doesn’t give a lot of press conferences and doesn’t think he should be a coach on the sidelines, but his hunger for championship football is as ferocious as that of any owner in the league. He’s not a money counter. He’s not primping his investment.
Pat Bowlen wants a winner in Denver – and in his desire to reclaim the throne he evicted the only man who has ever won it all for the Broncos.
The espoused reasons for this will come out in today’s press conferences. I’m sure both men will be genial and mouth all the platitudes in the world for each other – and in fact may mean most of them, a rarity in professional sports. I can’t imagine that the two don’t have a healthy respect for one another, even after this.
But no matter what they say, it comes down to this: Bowlen did not believe Shanahan could lead this team to a title. Bowlen lived through Reeves – he remembers what it’s like to have a coach who can’t quite pull it off, whose controlling nature forces out the best and the brightest. Who can’t add enough talent around his star quarterback to hang that championship banner.
Shanahan’s failures in past drafts are well-documented, but his more recent draft history shows a lot more promise. There was young talent on offense, and no terrible seasons to show for it.
But the defense remained a quagmire. When Plummer was here, it was obvious our offense wasn’t strong enough to overcome the defense that Indy shredded repeatedly. With Cutler, nothing has changed – at least not for the better. We had a worse defense, with poorer talent and coordination than those teams that got destroyed by Manning and Wayne and Harrison. Even with a burgeoning Pro-Bowl cast on offense we are nowhere near a Super Bowl run until that gets fixed…and it was never fixed. Our free agents were damaged goods, our trades rarely panned out, and our aging leadership was never replaced. Shanahan, like Gruden and many other coaches, prefers the players to motivate themselves while he handles the schemes and plays. That works fine when your locker room is packed with the John Lynches and Al Wilsons of the world. It doesn’t work as well without those team leaders.
Apparently, Bowlen decided this approach was not going to improve us enough to make us champions, and overcame his long-standing loyalty to Mike and pulled the trigger.
And for one of the few times in his career Shanahan showed loyalty to someone, and it cost him. If the rumors are true that one of the issues that greased the wheels for his departure was his insistence that Slowik remain, then an out-of-character move for the king of the “This game is a business first” mentality is at the very least surprising.
For years, we assumed Shanahan was the Wizard of Oz, the man behind the curtain who pulled all the strings. There was one string he could no longer pull, however, and it’s the one Bowlen just clipped.
Will the Broncos be better off with a new coach, a new GM, a new front office approach? As Broncos fans, we can only hope so. We can hope that the next head coach of the Broncos can pull a Tony Dungy, and take a young, brilliant QB and a good cast of offensive talent and turn it into a juggernaut that eventually brings back the title. If that doesn’t happen – or worse, Shanahan goes somewhere else and wins a title while we founder – Bowlen will be ridiculed and reviled.
But the man with the competitive fire and the checkbook decided to remove Shanahan before he became the next Reeves, or Shula – the good coach who had some championship pieces in place but who could not quite get that lightning back into the bottle.
Whether it was the right move or not remains to be seen, but it’s certainly a slap across the face to all Broncos fans, as well as people around the league. Wake up, people. Change is upon us. Every good new thing is built on the back of some other thing, whether it succeeded or failed.
Here’s hoping the offense Shanahan was creating will be able to blossom under our next leader, and that our defense doesn’t become his Achilles Heel as well.
Cutler, Marshall, Clady, Royal, Harris, Hillis…these could be the most important gifts given toward our next championship by the man who brought us “This one’s for John” and “This one’s for you.”
Pat Bowlen’s most important job in the last 15 years is making that a reality.
~G
Until Pat Bowlen believed the Tower of Babel had grown too tall, cast too big a shadow, had grown too insular and brought it all crashing down.
It might have been overlooked, as Bowlen himself gave the title of Broncos Coach For Life to Shanahan, but Pat is every inch the competitive soul that Jerry Jones is. He is easy to forget since he doesn’t give a lot of press conferences and doesn’t think he should be a coach on the sidelines, but his hunger for championship football is as ferocious as that of any owner in the league. He’s not a money counter. He’s not primping his investment.
Pat Bowlen wants a winner in Denver – and in his desire to reclaim the throne he evicted the only man who has ever won it all for the Broncos.
The espoused reasons for this will come out in today’s press conferences. I’m sure both men will be genial and mouth all the platitudes in the world for each other – and in fact may mean most of them, a rarity in professional sports. I can’t imagine that the two don’t have a healthy respect for one another, even after this.
But no matter what they say, it comes down to this: Bowlen did not believe Shanahan could lead this team to a title. Bowlen lived through Reeves – he remembers what it’s like to have a coach who can’t quite pull it off, whose controlling nature forces out the best and the brightest. Who can’t add enough talent around his star quarterback to hang that championship banner.
Shanahan’s failures in past drafts are well-documented, but his more recent draft history shows a lot more promise. There was young talent on offense, and no terrible seasons to show for it.
But the defense remained a quagmire. When Plummer was here, it was obvious our offense wasn’t strong enough to overcome the defense that Indy shredded repeatedly. With Cutler, nothing has changed – at least not for the better. We had a worse defense, with poorer talent and coordination than those teams that got destroyed by Manning and Wayne and Harrison. Even with a burgeoning Pro-Bowl cast on offense we are nowhere near a Super Bowl run until that gets fixed…and it was never fixed. Our free agents were damaged goods, our trades rarely panned out, and our aging leadership was never replaced. Shanahan, like Gruden and many other coaches, prefers the players to motivate themselves while he handles the schemes and plays. That works fine when your locker room is packed with the John Lynches and Al Wilsons of the world. It doesn’t work as well without those team leaders.
Apparently, Bowlen decided this approach was not going to improve us enough to make us champions, and overcame his long-standing loyalty to Mike and pulled the trigger.
And for one of the few times in his career Shanahan showed loyalty to someone, and it cost him. If the rumors are true that one of the issues that greased the wheels for his departure was his insistence that Slowik remain, then an out-of-character move for the king of the “This game is a business first” mentality is at the very least surprising.
For years, we assumed Shanahan was the Wizard of Oz, the man behind the curtain who pulled all the strings. There was one string he could no longer pull, however, and it’s the one Bowlen just clipped.
Will the Broncos be better off with a new coach, a new GM, a new front office approach? As Broncos fans, we can only hope so. We can hope that the next head coach of the Broncos can pull a Tony Dungy, and take a young, brilliant QB and a good cast of offensive talent and turn it into a juggernaut that eventually brings back the title. If that doesn’t happen – or worse, Shanahan goes somewhere else and wins a title while we founder – Bowlen will be ridiculed and reviled.
But the man with the competitive fire and the checkbook decided to remove Shanahan before he became the next Reeves, or Shula – the good coach who had some championship pieces in place but who could not quite get that lightning back into the bottle.
Whether it was the right move or not remains to be seen, but it’s certainly a slap across the face to all Broncos fans, as well as people around the league. Wake up, people. Change is upon us. Every good new thing is built on the back of some other thing, whether it succeeded or failed.
Here’s hoping the offense Shanahan was creating will be able to blossom under our next leader, and that our defense doesn’t become his Achilles Heel as well.
Cutler, Marshall, Clady, Royal, Harris, Hillis…these could be the most important gifts given toward our next championship by the man who brought us “This one’s for John” and “This one’s for you.”
Pat Bowlen’s most important job in the last 15 years is making that a reality.
~G