Note to Pittsburgh Steelers: Mike Shanahan Rarely Loses Football Games After The BYE

by Michael Bean on Oct 15, 2007 6:26 PM EDT in News

Some may disagree with me, but I think Mike Shanahan has been a very good coach for a very long time in Denver. I mentioned him in a post this summer about the 5 best teams of the past decade:

In all honesty, the Broncos might deserve to be ahead of the Steelers and perhaps even the Eagles for their astounding consistency the past ten years. Whatever though, I hate the Broncos. Also, since the '97 and '98 Super Bowl winning seasons (which technically constitute the first two years of the past decade), the Broncos haven't done much in the playoffs. Winning in the playoffs takes a little luck though. Winning each year during the regular season is no fluke. In fact, the Broncos haven't had a losing record since '99. They didn't make it out of the Wild Card Round though in any of those years except in 2005 when the Steelers jumped out to an early lead that we never surrendered. Still, as much as I dislike Mike Shanahan, you have to give him credit for the success he's had in the Mile High City.

You just don't go 7 years without a losing record without having a solid coach, especially when you have Brian Griese and Jake Plummer quarterbacking your team. I don't watch enough Broncos games to know how good Shanahan is making adjustments mid-game, but he's obviously doing something right with the big-picture things of his program in Denver.

Anyway, I wanted to see how Shanahan had fared coming out of a BYE week since taking over the Denver Broncos in 1995.

How'd his teams do? 9-3, with losses coming in 1997 (@ Oakland 35-38), 1999 (10-16 vs. KC) and 2002 (10-34 vs. Oakland).

That's four straight and six-of-seven for Shanahan's teams. More to come this week on what kind of team Denver has in 2007, but suffice it to say, we shouldn't be penciling this game into the W-column just yet.

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Too much experimentation

I too am wary of Shanahan the play caller after a bye but I think the Broncos have issues because of Shanahan the talent evaluator. The last couple of years he's seemingly done a chemistry experiment each year especially on defense with trades and free agent acquisitions. In 2005 they were a successful blitzing defense (against a soft-ish schedule) and when we picked up almost everything in the AFC championship game and burned them, he went to an coverage heavy defense at the start of 2006. That worked well for a while and then fell apart once they played the Colts. This year they have a new D-coordinator and again a bunch of new defensive lineman who don't know how to play the scheme properly.

I don't think a bye week is enough time to fix stuff that should have been done in training camp. Against us, I expect to them to sell out to stop the run and that should allow Ben to burn them throwing.

All that said, Shanahan has always been a gambler and expect him to do something zany early and if it comes off try to ride that momentum to a win.

by santhome on Oct 15, 2007 10:29 PM EDT reply actions

my take

I do fear the Broncos a little bit more since they've had a week to sit at home and think about a 41-3 loss to the Chargers. The Steelers should get the Broncos best effort of the year.

It also appears that Travis Henry will still be able to play for a couple more weeks.

by cgolden on Oct 16, 2007 9:54 AM EDT reply actions