ShareThisMike Shanahan will coach again, and soon, if that is what he wants to do. There is no hard landing for someone who has won two Super Bowls.
The Denver Broncos, however, are now damned by that most ominous of phrases, a new direction.
That direction could be down before it is up, rather than sideways, as it is now, as it has been for some time. But what is absolutely true is there is no savior for the Broncos waiting out there to do what Shanahan could not.
Not Bill Cowher. Not Brian Billick. Not Steve Mariucci. None of the usual suspects, though if Jon Gruden is finished in Tampa, I say, come on out.
My personal choice would be Jim Harbaugh, the Stanford live wire, just on the basis of what his brother Jack did in Baltimore in his first year as a pro coach. Or I would have grabbed Mike Singletary if the 49ers had not suddenly wised up.
Certainly some energy, some enthusiasm, is needed around the Broncos, not ever obvious with the muffled Shanahan, a coach through and through but an inspiration never.
You expected him to bleed chalk, if he bled at all. This is a man without need of counsel or assistance, which is his ultimate flaw.
Shanahan could believe that no matter how ordinary, how awful, the talent of the team he coached, he would make it better. And he did.
This season of plugging and patching was truly a masterful job by Shanahan, and 8-8 defines what the Broncos are, dead average.
Shanahan is also responsible for that, for he is not only the coxswain of this boat, he is also the quartermaster. Those are all his choices, the bums and the better ones, and aside from the obvious few -- Jay Cutler, Brandon Marshall, Eddie Royal and Ryan Clady -- this was a team of rag pickers.
There were those tailback injuries, but on the last day, that little old cell-phone refugee, Tatum Bell, actually looked like a familiar Broncos running back.
There are no excuses for the defense, not one in 11, from the pliable pass push to the roomy and generous secondary and in between as hopeless a group of linebackers as ever shared numbers beginning with 5.
Even corner Champ Bailey, the steady and the famed, played like a man chasing his hat in the wind.
At the beginning of this, 8-8 might have seemed a reasonable result, playing for the playoffs and the division on the final day of the season an accomplishment, and had the Broncos climbed up, as did San Diego, instead of falling down, the flavor at the end would be less bitter.
Instead, there is only a sense of wasted chances and unfinished business. With all the problems, all the injuries and mending on the fly, the Broncos remained in control, a weekly reminder from the locker room. This was theirs to lose, and lose it they did. Hideously, horribly and utterly.
It may be just as well because so loud and notorious a failure should keep a sense of urgency out front, a demand to fix the fixable and improve the awful.
And that would seem to start now with Shanahan, or rather without him. (I say start with Nate Webster.) It might seem wiser to let the guy who broke it fix it, but Shanahan has had several rehabs already, and results grew steadily more unacceptable.
No greater ego exists than that of a head football coach, unless it is the owner, and both cases here it seemed as if the two of them could finish each other's sentences, and not only because neither ever said anything worth hearing.
If, as owner Pat Bowlen said, this is best for all concerned, it is certainly better for Shanahan than for the Broncos. Shanny's old act will play new somewhere else, whereas the Broncos have to be reorganized and restocked, not just with the usual second-hand defensive lineman but top to bottom.
Things will no longer work as they did, and they worked as Shanahan willed. An entirely new order of business will be needed, sorting out leadership, establishing trust, and calming the locker room.
It is a brave, and certainly astonishing thing to do, there being no great public outcry for it, or even any real whispers that it might happen. What has always been assumed is that there was not enough rope in Aisle 11 of Home Depot to hang the Mastermind, or for him to hang himself.
And it may be foolhardy to dump Shanahan as well because Bowlen fails the one test any owner must pass before making so great a change.
No coach should be fired if he is at the top of a list of any coach you would hire.
That is where Shanahan is. Except not here in Denver.
(Contact Bernie Lincicome of the Rocky Mountain News at lincicomeb(at)RockyMountainNews.com.)
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