this is the stinking truth honestly this is going to be a treat for everybody out there because this is going to be a case where mark talks about mark and my favorite subject it's your favorite subject yeah so no seriously you did something really cool yesterday uh you got invited out by broncos coach sean payton you have you've had a good relationship with him over the years sure he said come on out hang out we'll meet we'll talk we'll go out to practice watch practice so what was it like yeah it was i mean it was awesome um so sean and i've known each other forever right and When he was with the Saints, I consulted the run game for the Saints. And so we've been buddies for a long time. And so we were just kind of texting back and forth. I congratulated him on his new deal with the Broncos, new five-year extension. And he said, hey, why don't you come out to practice Tuesday, our first official day of minicamp, and we'll just chop it up and do all these things. So show up to practice right after the radio show and park and somebody grabs me and runs me up to Sean's office. And then we sat in his office for...
probably somewhere between 30 and 45 minutes just talking about football, talking about his new contract. I think one of the things that was really cool for me... Because, you know, I got to play for two legendary coaches. One currently in the Hall of Fame. One should be in the Hall of Fame. Joe Gibbs, legendary coach, great man, unbelievable innovator when he was coaching. And then, of course, Mike Shanahan. And so we're talking about football and, you know, how football has evolved and essentially using shifts and motions and personnel packages to undress a defense. And he goes, you're really looking for two things for the quarterback pre-snap.
You're using motions to see man and zone indicators and you're using shifts to man and zone indicators and the motions and the shifts to undress the defense to see who's blitzing, who's the potential guy coming so we can redirect protection and we can protect ourselves in pass protection. And then, you know, we're talking about that and talking about all the different things that go on pre-snap and all that. He goes, really, when you look at it, it was Mike Shanahan. that created that was the first time in this league that we saw big guys line up outside the little guys. So we saw the little guys, wide receivers running the slots, tight ends and motion and running backs out to get those man zone indicators. If they just bumped and the corner gets out over a running back, you know 100% its zone. If all of a sudden you motion the running back out and the linebacker chases them out there, you know you're getting some type of man to man. And it's gotten more complex with defenses motioning out there and then playing zone.
or kicking out a defensive end and basically showing some man tendencies but playing zone out of those things so it becomes a little bit more complicated than it used to be. And that's one of the adjustments defenses have made and they're much better at that. But it was really Mike Shanahan who created that. And then you look at Mike Shanahan getting... bypassed for the Hall of Fame, and you look at all the things that are going on in the league right now, how he took that West Coast offense of Bill Walsh, but combined it with that outside zone to create the bootkeep stuff and the play action off of that stuff, and using the motions and using the multiple personnel groupings and all those things, and you sit there and think, the influence that he has had on the league, where about 60% of the teams in this league, that's what they run. The root of what they run in the National Football League is Mike Shanahan's stuff from our mid-90s Broncos teams.
And that influenced for him to not be voted in the Hall of Fame. And this is why the Hall of Fame, this is why there are things about the Hall of Fame that suck because... Like a lot of the voters don't understand that. They don't have that context. They don't have that knowledge. They don't understand that that guy, the root of what he was doing, that is the trunk of all the things. Now, there are different branches and tangential branches of that, but the trunk of what the majority of the NFL is running right now is you can tie it to Mike Shanahan directly. When everything went down last year with Bill Belichick not getting into the Hall of Fame and people were going on and on about how, oh, this shows what a messed up process and system it is. I'm like...
You think you're just learning that now? Right. Any of us who've been following Mike Shanahan's trials and tribulations to get into the Hall of Fame understand it's been a flawed, screwed-up system for a while now. Yeah, for Bill Belichick, it was punishment. To me, Bill Belichick was punishment. It was like, we're not going to vote you in the first ballot because of Spygate, because of, you know, whatever, the Flakegate, because of it. Like, it was the Hall of Fame voters, you know, basically punishing you.
For Mike Shanahan, it's lack of knowledge. It's lack of understanding. It's just pure lack of understanding. So back to your conversation with Sean Payton, and I can't help but think that one big decision, one of the big decisions that came down this offseason has some tentacles to the whole Mike Shanahan thing. What does Shanahan have? You just talked about it. He has a coaching tree. He has an undeniable coaching tree. I think it's important for head coaches, their legacy, to want to have a coaching tree. Sean Payton doesn't really have a coaching tree.
And I wonder how much of the decision to turn over play calling this year to Davis Webb is with the idea that, hey, not only can this guy help me win this year with my young quarterback with Bo Nix, but if he goes on and has success, that's part of my tree. Maybe the start of my tree. Yeah, I think there's a couple of things. When it comes to offensive coordinators, just because you become an offensive coordinator or a defensive coordinator for that matter, and just because you get that opportunity to call plays and maybe you're really good at it. does not necessarily make that transition to head coach successful. And we've seen that throughout the history of this league, that there's a lot of great coordinators that hit their Peter principle at being a coordinator. They rise to the level of their incompetence when they take the next level for whatever the reason is. They're not as good with people. They're not as good at delegating authority. They're not as good at coaching the coaches. They're just not as good at that. And so they rise to be great coordinators, but they're not necessarily great head coaches. But at least they get the shot. But they get the shot. I think with...
Davis Webb, a couple of things that Sean said to me. He goes, one, I love him. He's a great young coach, great young innovator, great young coach. And let's just be honest right now. Like we've seen it with guys, Garrett Bowles. We've seen guys, oh, the guy's going to be an evil genius. And the guy's going to, you know, and I saw this with Sean Mannion in Philadelphia. Oh my God, the guy is such a, you know, he's got all this evil genius. He's like, you know, next level. One, genius in football.
are mutually exclusive events. Remember that. You're not coaching in the National Football League or playing in the National Football League if you're a genius. You're just not, right? It's a game developed by PE majors that is played by PE majors, okay? So let's, you know, I'm going to offend a lot of people. We're a bunch of public-educated kids, right? So just stop right there. None of us are rocket scientists. So the whole evil genius thing is totally overblown.
I think Sean understands how good he is, how good he is with people, how good he is conceptually, how good he is at creating stacking plays. And to Sean's credit, he was like, and Sean can be as arrogant. I mean, you don't rise to a level of being an NFL head coach or being a player if you're not extremely confident in what you're able to do. And Sean was incredibly forthright in saying, hey, man, as I've gotten older, I've gotten a little bit more conservative. And I think that he gives us a better opportunity to maybe get the play in a little bit earlier, to maybe undress the defense a little quicker, to maybe give the quarterback a little bit more information pre-snap.
that maybe I'm not getting. I'll still be totally involved in, you know, looking at third downs and looking at red zone and saying, I love this, this, and this. I do not like this against this defense. I'll still be game planning and stuff. I think the big difference is, talking to Sean, is during the week of preparation, not a lot will change. But during the course of a game, I can be a little bit more involved with the defense. I can be a little bit more involved with the quarterback as opposed to being an ed coach and thinking about what I'm going to call next and what I want to do in the next drive. I can sit there and say, hey, man, did you think about this? Or did you look at this pre-snap? Be a little bit more engaged game day with the entirety of the football team.