Mike Shanahan won’t get into the Pro Football Hall of Fame as a coach/contributor in the 2024 class, but he will undoubtedly reach Canton eventually.
Shanahan won a pair of Super Bowls while serving as Broncos coach in the late 1990s and parts of his offense and still used today by current Denver coach Sean Payton.
After a practice session earlier this week, Payton recalled some of Shanahan’s innovative plays that Payton adopted for his own scheme.
“We studied seven teams or six teams and Mike’s teams were always one of them,” Payton said on Aug. 14. “I can go through the games and the first time we saw this odd-ball empty package he opened up here against Dallas. He was putting [Shannon] Sharpe outside of the ‘X’ [receiver]. There are just so many things that he has done from an innovative standpoint.
“The Super Bowl [play] where [John] Elway runs the deep boot and [Rod] Smith runs the comeback post — we had never seen that route before, and it was like, ‘Ah!’ We were all putting that in. Tupelo — we gave it a name. Mike invented that and he was a part of that. To hear that it was a sideline adjustment [was incredible].”
Payton was serving as a quarterbacks coach with the Philadelphia Eagles when Shanahan made an in-game adjustment to create the Super Bowl touchdown seen in the above video. As a young coach, Payton was clearly influenced by Shanahan’s innovative concepts.
Payton described Shanahan as a smart, detailed coach that was tough to play against. Shanahan, 70, last coached in the NFL in 2013, but he has served as an unofficial consultant for his son, Kyle, who coaches the San Francisco 49ers. Elements of his offense will continue to be used across the NFL for years to come, which is part of his Hall of Fame-worthy resume.
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