As I watched the field of contenders in the AFC playoffs, I noticed that all were built with a certain mold in mind.
Jacksonville has a ferocious defense and a hard-hitting running game. They always have - it's Del Rio's style.
The Patriots have a similarly ferocious defense and a ton of offensive firepower to boot. Defense has always been a trademark of Bill B, and he added offense after coming up just short against Indy last season using a bunch of wide-outs he picked up off the scrap heap.
San Diego was built through the draft with - again - a very good defense and a talented run game, trying not to rely too hard on Rivers and his 1 TE / 1 WR pass setup.
Indianapolis created a juggernaut offense, perfectly suited for the indoor track they play on, and spent years tweaking their defense to get it fast and aggressive enough to defeat New England.
They are built around team philosophies, around each front office's vision of what a championship team should look like. Whether they go offense-first or defense-first, the blueprint is tried and true, and the successes have been there for each system.
Mike Shanahan, coach for life, has also demonstrated he has a vision of what a championship team should look like - one that is also proven to work.
So if we want to know what Mike believes will get it done with the Broncos, all we have to do is look back to the past and determine how far away we are from the Shanahan Blueprint For Success.
First on offense:
1) Running the ball. For all that he's a West Coast guru, Mike Shanahan believes in a great running game leading to championships. "You win when you can run the ball and stop the run" is one of his mottos. He is justifiably proud of their consistent top-5 finishes in rush offense. The Broncos have been slipping here in recent years, both at RB and FB. When you look at what we had during 96-98 and what we have now, the differences are startling.
RB 96-98: Terrell Davis, HOF candidate
now: RBBC, with Travis Henry, Selvin Young and Andre Hall all competing for the top spot
FB 96-98: Aaron Craver (96) and Howard Griffith (97 and 98). Griffith was a Pro-Bowl level candidate.
now: Converted RBs Sapp and Bell.
This is a deficiency that should be cleared up soon if the Broncos want to return to the top. Their offense functions with almost any running back, but it would excel with an improvement to the RB and FB positions. Shanahan also likes to throw the ball to the RB, but Selvin Young proved this year he can catch it out of the backfield and do something with it, so the current team at least matches up with the championship-level ones in that regard.
2) He loves the pass-catching tight end. Shanahan's version of a 3 wide set is 2 wide receivers and a tight-end. Our 3rd wideout functions as our 4th in reality. Here at least we have someone who can catch the ball.
TE 96-98: Shannon Sharpe, HOF candidate, averaged 70+ catches and nearly 1000 yards those 3 years
Now: Tony Scheffler, had 49 catches for 549 yards in '07.
Scheffler is no Sharpe, but he fits the bill of a big pass-catcher across the middle and a great safety valve for a QB. Shannon had to work on his blocking early in his career so that he could stay on the field more, and Scheffler has the same issue. Hopefully he puts the amount of work into it that Shannon did, but until then our slot WR and our TE will be a combo 3rd receiver.
3) Two wides who are mirrors of each other. Rod Smith and Ed McCaffrey were both strong enough and fast enough to do whatever they wanted, and were immaculate route runners with terrific hands. Both men could be either the possession guy or the deep guy and that allowed Shanahan to tweak the offense as he chose, without the defenders being able to key on one guy always running the curl or the post and the other guy always running the fly. It made the offense more deceptive and harder to defend.
96-98: Rod Smith and Ed McCaffrey (Anthony Miller in '96, but we're ignoring him right now).
Now: Brandon Marshall and Brandon Stokley.
Marshall can go deep, go across the middle, has very good hands and is a burden to bring down. He's one-half of the equation. A healthy and productive Javon Walker would fill the Eddie Mac side of it...but he has been neither this past year, and may not be here in the future. Stokley signed and will be here, but Shanahan's preference is for him to play the slot (making up the difference between Sharpe's production at TE and Scheffler's), be in on fewer plays and thereby stay healthier, so we're looking for Marshall's mirror, whether in Walker or some other wideout.
4) A pair of Pro-Bowl OTs, with a Pro-Bowl C anchor for the line. Shanahan has taken his zone-blocking philosophy and turned it into an art, but sometimes he needs better performers to maximize his art. He brought in Zimmerman and Jones to protect both sides of his HOF QB, and drafted a perennial Pro-Bowl center to handle the middle. The guards were good but interchangable. Once the middle was secure and the ends were large protective cushions, Elway flourished more than he ever had before.
96-98: Zimmerman and Jones at the Tackles (both Pro-Bowlers, Zimm a HOFer) and Nalen (Pro-Bowler and ROFer) at center making the calls.
Now: No LT, inexperienced RT options in Harris, Pears and Kuper, with potentially Nalen's last year at center and no blue-chip replacement ready (Hamilton's a question mark due to the concussion issue). The guards may be the best part of the line, opposite of the SB years.
This right here is a huge responsibility to fill. Both the LT and RT slots are up for grabs, and the center position is manned by a guy wtih a torn bicep, backed up by a guy who missed a year with a concussion, and with the only other true center on the depth chart being merely adequate at best (Myers). A free-agent LT would go a huge way toward helping the confusion, but March and April will tell us where we're at with improving the line's performance from last season. And I'll say this: until we properly address the OL issues, we will never be an elite team. There are too many good defenses above us in the AFC for us to get by with mediocre line play.
5) A QB who can make all the throws, is tough as nails, is looked to as an unquestioned on-the-field leader and who comes with some swagger. Elway walked like John Wayne. His team-mates watched the things he did in awe, and his legend sustained them no matter what the scoreboard said. The defense played harder even when he struggled for the first 58 minutes of the game, knowing "If we can keep it to one score, John'll win this thing for us." He threw the ball harder than any QB I've ever seen, so much so that they had to increase the speed of the football-throwing machines in training camp to get the wide receivers used to catching that hard a ball.
96-98: #7
Now: #6
Cutler has the swagger, he has the arm, he's definitely tough, and leadership will come. Shanahan picked a pocket-passing cerebral guy without an arm or a heart for his first replacement of the Great One, and a scrambling mad-cap maverick with the same lack of arm and heart for his second one. Cutler has more arm than either, and skills both inside and outside the pocket. You can't gift someone with greatness, though - he'll have to find that himself. Jeff George had all the right tools, except for the one between his ears and the beating thing in his ribcage. I don't believe Cutler is a George, but the feeling out time is over. It's Cutler's team now. Rod Smith will be gone, Nalen has a foot out the door, Lepsis has retired and Hamilton's an unknown. No one else has been around the Broncos offense any longer than Cutler - so it's all gonna be on him now. At least we seem to have gotten this most-tricky of pieces in place for the next championship run.
6) SCORE. Those teams were 4th, 2nd, and 1st in scoring offense. They were top 5 in *both* rushing and passing TDs every year. They put the ball in the end zone. All the rest of this stuff doesn't matter if you don't get points from it (as our record showed this year. A top 10 running game, a 3500 yard passer and a 100-catch receiver don't mean anything if you're kicking field goals from the 2 all the time). Shanahan prides himself on an efficient offense. He loves the word efficient. It means "no wasted effort." If we go 70 yards down the field then there had better be 7 on the board when we're through.
96-98: Awesome.
Now: Mediocre. This is the single biggest contribution that coaching makes for this offense (besides the run scheme). It doesn't matter what your talent level is or how perfectly they match up against the other team if you do not take advantage of your strengths and their weaknesses by putting points on the board. Those teams never let the opposition "hang around." This team is infamous for it. Part of it's youth, which takes care of itself as the years pass, and part of it is play-calling. If Shanahan wants back his SB teams, this is a problem he needs to address by looking in the mirror. Perhaps the departure of Heimerdinger is the start of it. My fingers are crossed.