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Broncos head coach
Mike Shanahan
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Though it pales in comparison to the tragedy America endures from recent terrorist
attacks, the season-ending broken leg suffered by WR Ed McCaffrey in Week One was, in a
purely football context, a real disaster for the Broncos.
Teammate Rod Smith said the Broncos would have been better off losing the game and have
McCaffrey available for the rest of the season than to have won the game and lost
McCaffrey to injury.
Broncos RB Terrell Davis said McCaffrey can’t be replaced, regardless of whom the
team brings in to replace him.
Denver LB Bill Romanowski called McCaffrey one of the team’s most valuable players
on a daily and yearly basis.
In terms of Denver’s hopes of winning this season’s Super Bowl,
McCaffrey’s injury was a huge deal, which is proof of head coach Mike Shanahan’s
offensive genius.
McCaffrey caught 101 passes last season, so saying his injury hurts the Broncos’
title hopes is not exactly columnist-goes-out-on-a-limb material.
It wasn’t always this way, however. McCaffrey did not exactly arrive in Denver
with a silver spoon in his mouth and stardom on his résumé.
He averaged a nondescript 30.7 catches per season in three years with the Giants, which
so impressed the New York organization that he was cut. He caught a mere 11 passes for the
49ers the next season before signing with the Broncos as an unrestricted free agent in
1995.
The point here is that the rest of the NFL was not losing any sleep at the prospect of
McCaffrey joining the Broncos back then. Of course, at that time, no one had any idea of
the offensive magic Shanahan would conjure up as a head coach.
Everyone knows now. Quite simply, Shanahan does more with less on offense than anyone
else in the NFL.
Let’s start with McCaffrey. He doesn’t look pretty doing things, but he finds
a way to get them done. He’s the type of player who has to be allowed to run the
right routes in the right type of system to be effective. Shanahan recognized that.
McCaffrey has a deceptive stride and is faster than you think. Most teams missed that.
Shanahan did not.
Shanahan has piled up a lot of wins by seeing things that other teams missed. He also
has piled up a lot of wins by designing an offensive system that emphasizes qualities that
aren’t nearly as important in other offensive systems. Thus, the Shanahan system can
take leftovers and scraps that would not work elsewhere and turn them into stars.
The Broncos’ wide receivers are a perfect example. McCaffrey’s sidekick has
been Smith, who also hit the triple-digit mark in catches last season. He wasn’t even
drafted coming out of college in 1994.
Yet both have become stars.
Both have more in common than Shanahan magic. Both have deceptive speed. Both are
excellent blockers, which the system demands because of the type of running the Broncos
do. Both are hungry overachievers.
Shanahan’s system puts a premium on different qualities for receivers than other
teams look for. Instead of drooling over size and speed, this system calls for its wide
receivers to have good football instincts, toughness and a knack for getting open. These
qualities cannot be measured with a stopwatch. They only can be measured with a precise
eye for what uniquely makes the Shanahan system tick.
Shanahan has that eye.
McCaffrey and Smith have those qualities. The rest of the league’s scraps are
filet mignon in Denver.
Wide receiver is not the only position where this holds true for the Broncos.
It’s the same at running back. Shanahan has consistently found stars late in the
draft.
Terrell Davis was a sixth-round pick. He rushed for more than 1,000 yards in his first
four NFL seasons, including 2,008 yards in 2000.
Olandis Gary was a fourth-round pick. When Davis got hurt, Gary rushed for 1,159 yards
as a rookie in 1999.
Mike Anderson was a sixth-round pick. When Davis and Gary were both injured last
season, Anderson won Offensive Rookie of the Year honors by rushing for 1,487 yards.
In rounds when other teams are taking running backs to do little more than play on
special teams, the Broncos keep finding 1,000-yard rushers.
Is the rest of the league blind to the talents of the players the Broncos keep taking?
No, that’s not the case. The Broncos simply look for something different than the
rest of the league does, and that allows Denver to find value in later rounds that is not
available to teams that do not use the Shanahan system.
While the rest of the league places a premium on speed and size at running back, the
Broncos look for downhill, cutback runners. You don’t need to use a first-round pick
to find this type of running back. Once again, this leads to the Broncos being able to
find filet mignon amongst the scraps.
It’s the same story along the offensive line. The Broncos have had the most
productive offensive line in the NFL in recent years even though they don’t use
first-round picks at the position and they have had to replace a number of quality
players.
Once again, they achieve this by looking for what the rest of the league does not
emphasize. In a nutshell, the Broncos do not emphasize size at all. In this age of
"Bigger is better" in the NFL, this is very radical thinking. Instead, the
Broncos emphasize quick reactions, quick feet and the ability of a player to think on his
feet. These qualities can be found well after the first round of the draft.
Standouts such as Gary Zimmerman, Tony Jones and Mark Schlereth have all had to be
replaced in recent years. Still, the beat goes on without a hitch.
Just look at the current offensive line. Tom Nalen was taken in the seventh round, and
he is the second-best center in all of football behind only the Jets’ Kevin Mawae.
The rest of the starting line is made up of Matt Lepsis (undrafted), Trey Teague (seventh
round), Dan Neil (third round) and Lennie Friedman (second round).
If the Broncos ever draft an offensive lineman in the first round, I figure one of two
things will happen. Either the guy will be expected to become the greatest offensive
lineman in the history of the game, or the rest of the Broncos’ OLs will refuse to
talk to the prima donna for having the audacity to be a first-rounder.
Much of the credit for the Broncos’ success along the offensive line goes to OL
guru Alex Gibbs. The man is a true visionary. A lot of credit has to go to Shanahan too.
It is Shanahan who put an offensive system into place that would allow such
outside-the-box thinking to be incorporated into the master plan. Gibbs may make the
smaller-is-better philosophy work along the offensive line, but as the man in charge,
Shanahan had to sign off on this against-the-grain thinking.
The ultimate piece to any offensive puzzle is quarterback, and Shanahan gets high marks
there as well. What Shanahan looks for in a quarterback is a quick mind, quick feet and an
accurate arm. Unlike everywhere else in the Denver offense, this is not unique thinking in
NFL circles. In this case, Shanahan does not need to be different. He is just better.
Better than almost every other head coach in the league when it comes to working with
quarterbacks. He is a QB guru, something he showed with an all-world talent like John
Elway, as well as a more physically limited athlete like Brian Griese.
Shanahan was the Broncos’ head coach during Elway’s last four seasons in the
NFL. Not surprisingly, Elway’s three best seasons in terms of TD passes came during
that stretch.
Griese was a third-round pick. As quarterbacks go, that practically seems like going
undrafted. Heading into the ’98 draft, the book on Griese was that he could be a Gary
Kubiak, Jason Garrett, Jeff Rutledge journeyman type if he kept improving. Griese kept
improving all right — into a Pro Bowl quarterback. Shanahan magic strikes again.
Proof of Shanahan’s offensive genius is everywhere you look on the Denver roster.
That McCaffrey has gone from barely wanted to greatly missed in his career merely hammers
home the point.
To read more about the Broncos, see the current print edition of Pro Football Weekly,
dated Oct. 1, 2001. You'll find Adam Schefter's feature on the Broncos and their
unparalleled ability to fill the voids caused by injuries, such as the recent
season-ending injury to WR Ed McCaffrey. You'll also find a Q&A with Joel Buchsbaum
regarding McCaffrey's injury, the implications it has and the various wide receivers on
the Denver roster who may be asked to take on bigger roles in the offense. You can buy
this issue at a local newsstand or bookstore near you, or you can subscribe and receive it
at your door. Call 1-800-FOOTBALL (1-800-366-8225) to subscribe, or subscribe online by clicking here |
