Hall of Fame case for former Broncos coach as committee convenes for vote

DENVER — There is a mountain and then another challenging hill Mike Shanahan must still climb to reach his rightful place in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

The mountain comes Tuesday when a nine-person Hall of Fame subcommittee picks one coach – and one coach only – as the finalist who will go before the final 50-person HOF voting committee a week or so prior to Super Bowl LIX (59) at the New Orleans Superdome.

However, that lone coach finalist is not expected to be announced until Dec. 10 or 11. The Hall of Fame wants the lone coach finalist, one contributor finalist (likely an owner but former Colorado Buffalo offensive lineman John Wooten is among the semifinalists) and three senior player finalists (no former Broncos are up for vote) to be announced together.

Two former Broncos coaches – Shanahan and Dan Reeves – are among the nine semifinalists in the HOF coaching category. The others are:

• Tom Coughlin
• Mike Holmgren
• Chuck Knox
• Marty Schottenheimer
• George Seifert
• Bill Arnsparger
• Clark Shaughnessy

While Reeves is more than deserving and has been bypassed for far too long, it would be a surprise if the final discussion among subcommittee doesn’t narrow its search to Shanahan, Coughlin and Holmgren.

There are three major factors that combined separate Shanahan from the others:

Of the 12 coaches eligible for the Hall of Fame who have multiple Super Bowl wins, nine have been inducted. Shanahan, Seifert and Coughlin are the exceptions.

From those three, Shanahan was 170-138 in the regular season; Coughlin 170-150; Seifert, who inherited the Bill Walsh 49ers’ Way, was 114-62.

Shanahan won his two Super Bowls for the Broncos in back-to-back seasons of 1997-98.

There was a reason Shanahan was nicknamed The Mastermind in the 1990s. He was at the forefront of the NFL’s offensive explosion.

Between his three seasons as offensive coordinator for the 49ers (1992-94), four seasons as Broncos’ offensive coordinator (1985-87, 1991) and 14 seasons as Broncos head coach (1995-2008), Shanahan’s teams ranked in the top nine in points scored 16 times. And in 13 years his offenses ranked in the top five – not top 10, but top five – in rushing.

It was Shanahan’s one-cut, zone-blocking rushing system that has carried on and still lives in various forms today, 12 years after he coached his last game for Washington.

Two of Shanahan’s assistants, Gary Kubiak and Sean McVay, have gone on to win Super Bowls as head coaches – Kubiak with the Broncos in 2015 and McVay with the Rams in 2021. Another former assistant, son Kyle Shanahan, has led the 49ers to two Super Bowls as head coach.

In all, 16 of Shanahan’s assistants have gone on to become head coaches including present-time McVay, son Kyle, Matt LaFleur, Mike McDaniel and Rahim Morris.

NFL veteran reporter Peter King will come out of retirement to present the case for Shanahan to the HOF subcommittee Tuesday. Charean Williams, longtime NFL reporter for the Dallas Morning News and now with Pro Football Talk, will present the case for Reeves – who went to four Super Bowls with two teams, and is ninth on the NFL’s all-time coaching list with 190 wins.

Should Shanahan receive the nod as the lone coach finalist, there will be one more significant hill to navigate. Of the five finalists from the coach (1), contributor (1) and senior players (3) categories, only three can be elected by the final HOF voting committee. This was instituted to eliminate the “rubber stamp” nature of elections for those pushed forward by subcommittees.

While it figures one contributor, one coach and one senior player would ultimately get 80% of the final vote, the adage is never judge a jury. Getting through as the lone coach finalist is no longer a certainty.

For those with some time, here’s an excerpt on the Shanahan chapter from this author’s recently released book, “The Elway Years.”

After Reeves was fired following the 1992 season, Broncos owner Pat Bowlen’s first replacement choice was Mike Shanahan.

To Bowlen’s surprise, Shanahan turned him down. Bowlen fired Reeves after 12 seasons as Broncos head coach in part because the owner thought sure he could make Shanahan — his all-time favorite assistant coach — the new football boss. The NFL’s Rooney Rule, which required teams to interview minority candidates for head coaching positions, was still 11 years away.

Absent the Rooney Rule, Bowlen had one man in mind to become his first head coaching hire. Remember, Bowlen inherited Reeves when he and his two siblings bought a majority stake in the Broncos from Edgar Kaiser Jr. for $51 million in 1984. Bowlen’s master plan was waylaid, though, when Shanahan, who had become a close friend in his years as an offensive assistant, balked.

For a couple reasons. One, even in the position of lower-paid offensive coordinator and not a head coach, you couldn’t beat working for the San Francisco 49ers. Team owner Eddie DeBartolo Jr. treated everyone in the organization with class, and not just the players and coaches. There was first-class travel with chef-prepared meals. While almost every team had their players double up in hotel rooms on the road, 49er players got their own rooms. Breakfast and lunch meals were served at the team’s practice facility, not just dinner.

And they won, too. Won big. George Seifert was in his fourth season as Bill Walsh’s head coach replacement in 1992, and he did a great job of continuing on the organizational culture his predecessor established. With Shanahan as Seifert’s first-year offensive coordinator in 1992, the 49ers went 14-2 to earn a first-round playoff bye and led the NFL in scoring with 26.9 points per game. They lost to the Dallas Cowboys in the first of three consecutive NFC Championship Game matchups but Shanahan was immersed in the 49ers’ methods.

Still, he talked with Bowlen, who was offering Shanahan the chance to succeed Reeves as Broncos’ head coach for the 1993 season. Much to the disappointment of star quarterback John Elway, Shanahan declined. He explained:

“When Pat Bowlen asked me to come back after the ‘92 season, he asked me to come back and be the head coach and I told Pat the things I felt we needed to win a Super Bowl. He said, ‘Well, I can’t give you that in writing.’

“And I said, ‘If not, I’m going to stay in San Francisco.’ He said you won’t do that, you’re too close to John. I said one of the reasons why I won’t do it is I am close to John. I know how important it is that if I do come back to Denver, we’ve got to win Super Bowls. We just can’t go to the game, we’ve got to win it.

“Because I knew how the fans felt. And how I felt when I was there and being embarrassed in those Super Bowls even though we went there.”

What did Shanahan require from Bowlen? Huge financial commitments to begin with. Throughout the 1992 season, the hottest topics in the NFL were the advent of unrestricted free agency in 1993 and a salary cap system in 1994.

Some background. In its constant negotiating battles with the players union, the NFL in 1989 came up with a Plan B free agency system in which each of the 28 teams could assert exclusive rights to 37 veteran players on their roster.

Freeman McNeil, a New York Jets running back in his 12th (and as it turned out, final) season, was among the Plan Bs. He led a lawsuit filed by seven players against Plan B. It took three years for the legal system to play out but in 1992 a federal jury ruled Plan B violated antitrust laws.

The result was team owners and the players’ union negotiated a new collective bargaining agreement that allowed unrestricted free agency to begin in 1993 – a win for the players – with a salary cap system implemented in 1994 – a compromise for the owners.

If Bowlen wanted Shanahan to be his head coach in 1992, the owner had to promise, in writing, the Broncos would spend to the salary cap ceiling every year. To show how exploding TV revenues beginning in 1994 changed the NFL’s economy, the initial 1994 salary cap was $34.6 million. Cowboys’ quarterback Troy Aikman was the NFL’s highest-paid player with an average contract of $6.25 million per year.

In 2023, the NFL’s salary cap was $224.8 million – a 649 percent increase over 30 years – while Bengals’ quarterback Joe Burrow was the highest-paid player with a $55 million per year average. Burrow was among five quarterbacks making at least $51 million on average in 2023.

The revenue explosion could not have been fully predicted but whatever the salary ceiling was, Shanahan wanted his Broncos to hit it.

“At least be in the top 10 (in player spending),’’ Shanahan said. “And I told Pat I want to be in the top 10 with coaches’ salaries. I wanted meals for the players, breakfast and lunch so I can have these guys hanging out at the facility.

“And the other thing is I wanted players to have their own rooms. Because I found out in San Francisco that one of the biggest things for our players was they needed to get a good night’s sleep. Especially the day before the game. I said I’ll pay for it.”

Bowlen, who always operated on the thinnest of margins to the point he once had to take out a loan to sign veteran free agent Simeon Rice in 2007, couldn’t completely commit to what would be significant added expenses.

So Shanahan went back to the 49ers – he never told Elway why he didn’t take the Broncos’ job. Instead, he told Elway a little white lie that he and Bowlen couldn’t reach an agreement on salary. The reason why Shanahan didn’t tell Elway the truth about needing so many team-beneficial requirements in writing was he didn’t want the quarterback to become upset with his owner.

That may have caused irreconcilable differences between Elway and Bowlen. Shanahan had his fill with the Elway-Reeves’ squabbles. He didn’t need to eventually return to the team and find Elway and Bowlen weren’t happy with each other.

“Pat didn’t have a lot of money to do what Mike wanted,’’ Elway said. “But Mike wouldn’t tell me the reason he turned Pat down. He told me it was salary and I said, Well, what’s the difference (in negotiations)? He goes, aaahhh, $250,000, $500,000. I said I’ll pay ya. I’ll pay you the difference to come coach us. And he goes Aaahh, Aaahh, Aaahh.” Elway laughed.

Spurned by Shanahan following the 1992 season, Bowlen turned to his own defensive coordinator Wade Phillips to replace Reeves as head coach. Which worked out OK. Not great, but not bad. The Broncos went to the playoffs their first season under Phillips, albeit with a slightly better than average 9-7 record.

But Bowlen wanted better. He wanted what Shanahan had in San Francisco. Shanahan’s 49ers’ offense again led the NFL in scoring in 1993, this time with a 29.6 points per game average – 2.63 points more than their league-leading scoring total in 1992 – and again received a first-round playoff bye and again won a second-round Divisional playoff game.

And once again, San Francisco lost to the Cowboys in the NFC Championship Game.

Third time was the charm. The 49ers behind Steve Young, Jerry Rice and Deion Sanders – the league’s undisputed top cornerback who was in his first and only year with the team – would not be denied. The 49ers went 13-3 in the regular season with Young out balloting Lions running back Barry Sanders for the NFL’s Most Valuable Player Award.

For the third time in three years with Shanahan as their offensive coordinator, the 49ers led the league in scoring, this time with a whopping 31.6 points per game. After their first-round playoff bye, the 49ers crushed the Bears, 44-15 in the Divisional round and finally whipped the Cowboys, 38-28 in the NFC Championship Game. It wasn’t that close. The unstoppable 49ers jumped out to a 21-0 lead and were up 31-14 at halftime before coasting in.

In Super Bowl XXIX, Young threw six touchdown passes in a 49-24 romp over the San Diego Chargers.

“Everyone talked about the 49ers passing game,’’ Shanahan said of the early 1990 offenses he directed. “But those three years, what made them different was their running game.”

Indeed, the 49ers were a top six rushing team each of Shanahan’s three years there and led the league with 4.8 and 4.6 yards per carry in 1992 and ’93. Not easy to do when Steve Young and Jerry Rice were at the same time compiling passing records.

Shanahan had reached the Mount Everest of football mountain tops, albeit as an offensive coordinator, not a head coach. He was ready again for that final step as head coach, only this time not with unpredictable owner Al Davis and the Raiders, but with the owner and organization of his NFL roots, Pat Bowlen and the Denver Broncos. 

After the 49ers’ Super Bowl win in Miami, who would be waiting in the lobby of their team hotel? Pat Bowlen. He was ready to put Shanahan’s requests – top 10 in salary cap, top 10 in assistant coaches salaries, single rooms for players, breakfast and lunch at the team facility – in writing. Bowlen got his man. Mike Shanahan would become the ninth head coach in Broncos history starting with the 1995 season.

“I remember everybody being excited about Mike, just being such an offensive genius,’’ said kicker Jason Elam, who had just completed his second season with the Broncos. “I remember we were playing the 49ers the year before and they handled us pretty good. They had so many weapons all over the place. They had Steve Young and Rice and Taylor and their tight end, Brent Jones, and they were running up and down the field on us. Roger Craig. Somebody was wide open the whole time. You couldn’t cover everybody.

“I remember everybody being excited that he was going to get us over the hump. And this is going to be a really fun run. Coach Shanahan was much different than Wade. It was a respect — and we respected Wade, too – but we were a little more fearful of coach Shanahan. (Laughs). There was a professionalism and there was a certain way that you had to approach every second. In practice, not just the game. In practice. You crossed that line walking on the field you better have your focus.”

“They were highly organized and at the same time he really went to bat for us as players. The meals, having breakfast. Having a better lunch. Staying at very, very nice hotels. It wasn’t like we were all crammed in listening to each other snore before a game. So there was a standard where coach Shanahan said I’m going to treat you guys as good as I possibly can and I’m going to make sure you’re ready every Sunday to walk on the field. In return, I’m expecting you to give me, your teammates, the organization and the fan base everything you’ve got. That really resonated.”

What Bowlen didn’t know when he hired Shanahan was he was about to get a two-for-one. Gary Kubiak retired as Elway’s backup quarterback following his strong performance in the AFC Championship Game in Buffalo to cap Denver’s 1991 season and became an assistant coach for his alma mater Texas A&M in 1992-93. He was hired by Shanahan as San Francisco’s quarterbacks coach in 1994 with the idea of replacing Shanahan as the 49ers’ offensive coordinator when Shanny got his next head coaching gig.

“After ’93, George (Seifert) wanted to bring an offensive coach to replace me as coordinator in case I got a head coaching job the next year,’’ Shanahan said. “So I brought in Gary.’’

As it turned out, when the moment of truth arrived, Kubiak’s loyalty was to Shanahan and Denver much more than the 49ers.

“I had been there a year with Mike and we won the Super Bowl with Steve Young and Mike gets the Broncos’ job right after the game,’’ Kubiak said in 2023. “Mr. Bowlen, I see him at the hotel. Things are going down pretty quick. The 49ers tried to get me to stay and at that time being a coordinator for the 49ers was kind of a fast track to getting an NFL (head coach) opportunity but my loyalty and ties to Mike and John and my family loving Denver, it was easy for me to say no, I’m coming with you, let’s go.

“That was a dream come true for me and I had a lot of work to do before I was going to get to an (head coach) opportunity and I knew that so going with Mike was the best thing for me to do.”

There was one other lesson Shanahan learned from the 49ers that he brought with him in his third return stint with the Broncos: Bringing every single employee together to work as one organization with the common goal of winning the Super Bowl. Not just coaches and players. Everybody who works for a team. It helped create an environment where the night custodian could chitchat with the coach watching late-night film, the administrative assistants could say hi to the person selling ads in the game-day program and the ticket taker felt as important in her job as the placekicker did in his.

“The other thing I told Pat was what the 49ers had done that we had never done here was the attention to detail with the support staff,’’ Shanahan said. “The grounds crew, the training staff, the doctors. I told him we met my first day in San Francisco for 10 hours. There were no coaches in there except for me because I was the new guy as the offensive coordinator. I listened to everybody’s role in the organization. We didn’t talk one thing about football. Ten to 12 hours.

“That was a great learning experience for me. George was explaining that everyone has to be ranked in the top 5. George told me if I wasn’t in the top 5 on offense we’d probably have to let you go because to win Super Bowls we’re going to need the best at every position. And not just the coaching staff, but the support staff as well.

“When I was done with that meeting, it was so impressive to me I said to myself, now I know why this team has won four Super Bowls in 9 years. We (the Broncos) had been to three Super Bowls in four years. But this team had been to four Super Bowls in 9 years and had won them all. Coaching football was something that had come naturally to me. I had studied different college teams and pro teams. But the one thing I never had was knowing the roles and responsibilities of everybody in the organization.”

Remember when Shanahan told Bowlen he would pay the difference between double-occupied hotel rooms and singles? That was the agreement as Shanahan’s first Broncos’ team of 1995 took off for their first preseason road trip at San Francisco, followed the next week with a visit to Carolina.

“I didn’t even tell my wife about that,’’ Shanahan said. “If I told my wife she would have thought I was crazy. She would have never allowed it. So I never told my wife.”

But when the bill came due, “Pat took care of it,’’ Shanahan said.

Shanahan would never get another bill. By then, Bowlen had split his responsibilities between the Broncos and serving as co-chairman of the NFL broadcast committee. Bowlen was instrumental in bringing in a third network, Fox, to carrying NFL games on Sunday while NBC concentrated on delivering its primetime Sunday night broadcast package. TV revenues exploded, and so did the coffers for the 28 teams. Bowlen could afford single hotel rooms and a daily breakfast and lunch for the players.

Once the pertinent details with his owner and friend Pat Bowlen were worked out, Shanahan next had to sell his quarterback on the plan. And the plan with the ultimate goal of winning the Super Bowl – again, not merely getting to the Big Game, but winning it – was essentially to build an offense that was slightly less about Elway and more about running the ball.

For his first meeting with Elway as head coach, Shanahan smartly used Dan Marino as an example. Elway and Marino were quarterback rivals even though their teams rarely faced each other over their respective long careers. They were rivals, though, because they were both first-round picks in the 1983 NFL Draft – Elway was the No. 1 overall selection and the first of six quarterbacks taken in the first round; Marino slumped in his senior year at Pitt, throwing more interceptions (22) than touchdowns (17), and was the sixth and last quarterback taken in the first round, No. 27 overall, by Don Shula’s Miami Dolphins.

Marino played in a much more passer-friendly offense and took to the NFL game quicker and in only his second season of 1984 delivered a historic passing performance with a record 48 touchdowns and 5,084 yards. It wasn’t until 20 years later Peyton Manning broke Marino’s TD pass record with 49 in 2004. Marino’s single-season passing yardage marker wasn’t surpassed for another 27 years when Drew Brees and Tom Brady both took advantage of the NFL’s pass-friendly rule changes. Marino led the Dolphins to the only Super Bowl game in his career in 1984, only to get trounced by Joe Montana’s 49ers, 38-16.

Wearing loafers with no socks, jeans and a sweater, Shanahan was seated at a table in his otherwise empty Shanahan’s steakhouse restaurant in the Denver Tech Center in October 2023, talking about that 49ers-Dolphins Super Bowl.

“Guess how many times the Dolphins ran the ball?’’ Shanahan rhetorically asked. “Nine times for 25 yards. How many times did Marino throw the ball? 50? Joe Montana I think was 24 of 35, ran the ball 40 times for 211 yards.’’

Amazing. Here was Shanahan sitting at his restaurant at 71 years old and his memory was so sharp, it was as if he was reading the Super Bowl XIX boxscore stats from a sheet of paper in front of him. Nearly 40 years earlier, the Dolphins did indeed run the ball exactly 9 times for 25 yards. The 49ers rushed exactly 40 times for 211 yards. Montana completed exactly 24 of 35, as Shanahan said from the top of his head. Marino threw it 50 times.

This author had to look up all those numbers. Shanahan recited from memory the key stats in a game he was not part of.

“Dan Marino set all the passing records that year, but he only got 25 yards rushing and he got embarrassed because they got beat by (22) points in the Super Bowl,’’ Shanahan said.

Perhaps the reason why Shanahan could so specifically recite the stats from that game was it became the center point in his first address with Elway about the new way the Broncos would play offensive football.

“I told John, I said, ‘John you might not be in the Pro Bowl. I think you will, but we’ve been to Super Bowls because of your ability to make plays,’’ Shanahan said. “I told him the only way we’re going to win one is if I get you a good running game.

“He said, ‘I’ll do anything you want. I’ll take any chance I can as long as we win a Super Bowl. I don’t care how many times we run it. I’ve been to three and got our ass kicked and it’s more embarrassing than anything.”

When Elway went to his first Super Bowls to cap the 1986 season, the Broncos averaged 3.7 yards per carry. For his second Super Bowl to finish 1987, they averaged 3.9 yards per carry. Two years later, for Elway’s third Super Bowl appearance in the 1989 season, the Broncos averaged 3.8 yards per carry.

Elway could get the Broncos there but he didn’t have enough running game to control the line of scrimmage against the more physical NFC champions in the Super Bowl. Elway’s reaction to learning there would be more running the ball, and relying less on him, all in the name of winning the Super Bowl from his first meeting with Shanahan?

“Yeah. I didn’t care,’’ Elway said. “I was going into my what 13th year when Mike got here. Winning the Super Bowl was what I was still chasing. And I liked the offense. I knew what the base was. I was like, ‘Whatever you need me to do, I’ll do.’”

 As for Elway himself, he wasn’t quite as spry following his 12th season of 1994 as when Shanahan first joined the Broncos as an offensive assistant in 1984. He had just been sacked a league-most 46 times in just 14 games in 1994, which left him with 416 in his career to that point. Maybe his fastball had dropped a couple miles an hour from when he fired that ball into Mark Jackson to finish The Drive in the 1986 AFC Championship Game. But he still had all the arm strength he needed, and then some.

“He had reached that point in his career where we were having to manage some things,’’ Kubiak said. Remember Kubiak was now Elway’s offensive coordinator, not his backup quarterback buddy. “Because, damn, he had played so many years and was beat on so much. So Mike had put a great plan in place to how he was going to manage John’s offseason workload. All those things to keep a player motivated so you can get another two or three great years out of him.

“Because while there was no doubt John still wanted to play and compete — that was a no-brainer – but there are some things that go along with that, the hours in the offseason, the meetings, there are some ways where you want to make it a lot of fun for guys like that once they reach that point in their careers to keep them motivated, to keep them going.

“And to be honest with you, listening to John helped us coach him. We were both his friends, obviously, but now we were in different roles, having to do a job and we needed to listen to him and where he was mentally, physically, personally so that we could put that thing together for him where he could go out and win us a couple championships.”

Shanahan finished off his initial meeting as head coach with Elway by hammering home the message he first emphasized.

“If I can get you a running game and a good defense you’ll have better stats than you had at any point in your career,’’ Shanahan said. “But I said you have to have faith, No. 1. And it may take us a year to do it.’’

Elway was all in.

It did take Shanahan a year to get his roster and culture formed to vision. Sitting at 7-6 with three games remaining in the 1995 season, the Broncos then lost back-to-back close games to AFC West rivals Seattle, 31-27 as John Friesz – John Friesz! – threw two fourth quarter touchdown passes to erase a 27-17 deficit, and then the division champion Kansas City Chiefs, 20-17.

The Broncos were 7-8 and out of the postseason hunt.

They did win their season finale, 31-28 against the hated Raiders when Elway put together one of his patent fourth quarter comebacks from a 28-17 deficit.

“The difference in those eras was organization,’’ said receiver Rod Smith, who went from practice squad rookie with Phillips and Fassel in 1994 to the Broncos’ all-time receiving leader by the time he played his last game in 2006. “We weren’t as organized in the Wade Phillips and Jim Fassel era as we were in the Shanahan era. We had talented guys but you could tell it was more a team of individuals. Everybody was focused on themselves. Versus everybody focusing on us as a group with Mike Shanahan.

“And I think even Mr. Bowlen changed when Mike Shanahan changed. I think if Mr. Bowlen continued to run it the way he was running it, we would have never won the Super Bowl. You had coaches that basically didn’t come with the structure. And so for John, statistically, he may have went down in some ways but to see him acting like a 12-year-old kid playing football in the backyard with a friend was during the Shanahan era. It wasn’t as strenuous on him because he didn’t have to do everything. And you saw him have more fun. And I personally witnessed John going through that time where he just enjoyed playing football. I took that from him – play with this passion like you did when you were 12.”

“When coach Shanahan came you could see all the guys that left. We didn’t win immediately because the structure had to get fixed. And Mr. Bowlen gave him the resources to fix the structure. The structure wasn’t just about physical talent. It was mental, it was emotional, it was all those other things that make a team great. And I saw John transition with coach Shanahan and Kubes who said let’s make this game fun for him by taking some pressure off of him but he’s still going to be a first ballot Hall of Famer, and dominant quarterback in the NFL, with less stats. And I think that’s what happened.”

Although the Broncos finished a disappointing 8-8 in 1995, there was much to build on. Elway in his 13th NFL season threw a career-best 26 touchdown passes. Most notably, a sixth-round running back out of Georgia named Terrell Davis rushed for 1,117 yards as a rookie even though he missed the final 2 ½ games with a torn hamstring.

Elway at 35 years old was playing some of his best football and was clearly invigorated. Handing it off to T.D. and watching the strong, slashing running back make his one-cut runs behind the Broncos’ zone-blocking system will energize the most veteran of quarterbacks.