Mike Shanahan Joins the Ranks of the Unemployed

I am going to go off my normal script today and welcome someone to our ranks of the unemployed; Mike Shanahan, former Coach of the Denver Broncos. Welcome, Welcome, Welcome. It is sad to see you here, but you deserve it immensely.

For the record, I am a diehard Broncos fan. I have been there through the 3 Super Bowl losses in the 80’s, the 2 Super Bowl Wins in the 90’s and the last three years of 8-8 ball. I have suffered with the taunts from the Raiders fans during our bad years, and I have reveled over the slow, humiliation of Raiders’ owner Al Davis over the past 8 years of bad football.

Well, we too have been playing bad football. I am sad at that fact, but it has been no fun the last three years to watch Broncos Football when we can’t win the big game. We now have a quarterback that is one of the best. We have one of the best receivers in the game, in fact, we have one of the best passing attacks in football. Yet, we still managed to lose three of the last four games.

All we had to do was win 2 games out of the last 4 and we would have won the division and gone to the playoffs. I was not expecting much in the playoffs, but at least we would show that we are turning this boat around. Instead, we let the Chargers catch us and humiliate us in the last game of the 2008 season. Which means that for the past three seasons we have gone 24-24. That is horrible for a team that expects to win.

And so, here we are. Mike has been fired. He was a very great coach at one time. But, if you or I had done an 8-8 (let’s call that average) job in our own career for 3 years, we would be gone too. There is no room for average in football or in most business. Any business that wants to win requires it employees to be better than average. Well, Mike was average and he has joined us in the ranks of the unemployed.

I liked Mike, but it was his time. When I separate my fan-ness of Mike and the Broncos and put on my Director of Operations hat, it is clear it was time to go. Owner Pat Bowlen had very little choice and he made the hard call. Good bye Mike. Thanks for the 2 rings and the great years.
Maybe, just maybe we can convince Bill Cowher to come out of retirement and join the team.

Let’s make it a winning team again.