FanPost

Recreating the Wheel

Wade Phillips.

He got me thinking about the early to mid 1990's.

I started thinking about the ebbs and flows of franchises.

What causes some teams to reach unprecedented levels and what doesn't. I wanted to see if I could identify a trend.

I looked at the roster from 1997. The most memorable and beloved Broncos team in Broncos history.

Take a deep breath, now jump (yes, this is going somewhere)....

This is a list of 43 actives from 1997:


Shanahan inherited these guys (14):

Aldridge

Atwater

Burns

Elam

Hasselbach

Hilliard

Nalen

Dean Perry

Rouen

Sharpe

Traylor

Carswell

Chamberlain

Habib

Drafted (8):

Rod Smith

Terrell Davis

Mobley

Veland

Brown (Jamie)

Neil

Russ

Smith (Detron)



Free Agent Buys (21):

Zimmerman

Swayne

Al Williams

N. Smith

Romanowski (brought over from SF)

McKyer (brought over from SF)

McCaffrey (brought over from SF)

Dodge (brought over from SF)

Gordon

Green

Anderson

Griffith

Gamble

Jeffers

Jones (Tony)

Diaz Infante

Hebron

Cadrez

Brister

Jones (Ernest)

Richie (David) UFA from what I can tell

So - long story short - about 49% of these guys are Free Agents Shanahan brought to Denver. 32% were inherited. About 19% were drafted. The core of the Broncos was not drafted by or signed by Mike Shanahan. It was from Reeves or Phillips.

Atwater, Burns, Nalen, Sharpe, and Elway were all team captain level players and most of them (arguably all - if they would let special teamers in the hall, Keith Burns ought to get a sniff) are Hall of Fame players. Aldridge and Traylor played at or near an All-Pro level that year too.

So what am I getting at?

I guess I'm just saying that most great teams weren't completely builtby their current coach. We've seen Tomlin basically win a championship with Cowher's team and we've seen Gruden win with Dungy's team. We've seen Caldwell almost win one with Dungy's team. We even got to see Red Miller get to a championship with John Ralston's team.

Now, Shanahan won with his team, but most of the the biggest stars on his championship teams were not his draft picks or free agent pickups.

Even Sean Payton's 2009 Saints owe a debt of gratitude to the Jim Haslett drafts that preceded him. Jim Mora drafted Peyton Manning, AJ Smith drafted Drew Brees, Bill Cowher drafted Troy Palamalu and Big Ben, and hell, Brett Favre was drafted by Jerry Glanville. I mean, aside from Bill Bellichick, I can't think of too many coaches who built their team from the ground up on their own. And he inherited Beldsoe, who he had planned to keep as his long term starter until he hit the lottery with Brady.

Teams morph into new teams. The Broncos were an old school keep-it-close kind of team with Reeves. Then Philips took over and Denver aired it out more but had a young defense. By the time Shanahan got to town, he brought a running game and a boatload of O-Line talent. By the time Shanny left, he head to rebuild a defense from theground up and couldn't do it and didn't get to finish his offensive line rebuilding, but that was starting to take shape. When McDaniels got to Denver, he turned a couple of Shanny's big pieces in to a bunch of smaller pieces in order to fill a greater number of percieved holes. Not sure how this story ends.

Looking back, Shanahan deserves credit for filling gaps within 2 years through the draft and Free Agency. He brought in Terrell Davis and a great O-Line (including HoF'er Gary Zimmerman). He put 2 big studs on the D-line (Williams & Smith) and put a crazy person (Romo) into the LB corps to give it some proven experinece. Then he added corners. Well done in a VERY short period of time.

But it shows that without the platform that he inherited, there wasn't much of a chance for success. No Elway. No Sharpe. No Burns. No Atwater. No Nalen. That's too many holes to fill unless you're on a 4 year plan.

Because McDaniels chose to build the platform from scratch on his own and largely (aside from Champ, Clady, Royal, and a couple of others) scrap the one that was here (even if it was crude) he's on the 4 year plan. I'm not saying that if he'd have kept Cutler & Marshall & Scheffler that he would be competing at a higher level today, but I think that you can easily argue that most coaches would have kept that core and added OLine and DLine through FA and the draft in an attempt compete within a year or two.

No one man is perfect or even great at building a team from the ground up with no help and without dumb luck. By going against convention, McDaniels had angered fans and if he continues to lose, he may have set the team back a few years and I think that that is the biggest fear of most fans and my McDaniels has become such a polarizing figure. Conversely, if the team rallies and competes at a much higher level, then maybe his plans will be allowed to take shape, but his arc for success will test even the most patient Broncomaniacs (me).

This is what happens when I can't sleep. Off to Tylenol PM-land.

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