Mike Shanahan’s Hall of Fame case keeps getting harder to ignore.
The Broncos still have a strange gap in their history: eight Super Bowl appearances, three titles, and no head coach in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. That could change someday with Shanahan, the man who won back-to-back championships in Denver and remains the franchise’s strongest candidate for Canton.
A recent CBS Sports ranking of the 20 greatest head coaches in NFL history only sharpened that argument. Bryan De Ardo placed Shanahan at No. 16 and made the case in plain terms that his career belongs in the Hall. De Ardo pointed to Shanahan’s three Super Bowl wins from 1994-98, including one as the 49ers’ offensive coordinator and two more with the Broncos.
The Denver chapter is the one that still defines him. Shanahan helped John Elway close out his career with consecutive Super Bowl titles and built the kind of offense that turned Terrell Davis into a star. Davis, a former sixth-round pick, won league and Super Bowl MVP honors in Shanahan’s system, and he was the first of several running backs to thrive in the coach’s zone blocking scheme.
The 1997 title run was the one nobody saw coming. Shanahan led the Broncos past the defending champion Packers in Super Bowl XXXII, making Denver the first AFC team in 14 years to win the Super Bowl. The Broncos also became the second wild card team - and the first since 1980 - to do it.
A year later, Denver did it again. After opening 13-0, the Broncos tore through the postseason and outscored their opponents 95-32. In Super Bowl XXXIII, with the Falcons keying on Davis, Shanahan used him as a decoy and shifted the spotlight back to Elway, who delivered an MVP performance in the final game of his NFL career.
Shanahan’s post-Denver record is the part that has kept him out so far. The Broncos never got back to that same championship level after Elway retired, though they did make another Super Bowl run in 2005. Shanahan later had only one winning season in four years in Washington, and that stretch is likely a big reason he has not been enshrined yet.
Still, his influence runs far beyond his own sideline. De Ardo noted that Shanahan’s coaching tree includes Gary Kubiak, his son Kyle Shanahan, and names like Sean McVay, Matt and Mike LaFleur, Mike McDaniel, Robert Saleh and Kevin Stefanski.
That broader impact matters, but so does the simple math of his résumé. Shanahan won 170 games, tied for 19th-most in league history, and he is one of only eight coaches to win back-to-back Super Bowls. He also helped Young and Elway reach the top of the sport, and both cases for Canton feel stronger because of him.
The Hall of Fame call hasn’t come yet. But Shanahan’s place in that conversation is no longer in doubt.
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