Denver's Way

Rod Smith emerged as one of the NFL's best wide receivers last year, catching 100 balls for the Denver Broncos and earning his first trip to the Pro Bowl. However, ask coach Mike Shanahan to name the play he remembers most in Smith's breakout season, and he'll say, "His block in Seattle."

The playoff hopes of the 7-4 Broncos were flickering as the rain pelted Husky Stadium that late November afternoon. Four minutes remained in a 31-31 game against the Seahawks, and Denver, playing without injured starting quarterback Brian Griese, faced a second-and-10 at its 20-yard line. Before he ran onto the field for what would be a Mike Anderson run around left end, Smith was told by offensive line coach Alex Gibbs that Seattle free safety Jay Bellamy would attempt to shoot the gap between the left tackle and Smith in the left slot. "You get rid of him," Gibbs barked, "and Mike's out the gate. Gone."

Smith did more than that. He shot across the line and engaged cornerback Willie Williams. As Anderson dashed around left end, Smith drove Williams into Bellamy, demolishing neither defender but neutralizing both. Anderson was gone, and the Broncos had a 38-31 victory. "We won that game," says Shanahan, "because Rod Smith is totally unselfish—and a great blocker."

It's eight months later, early August in Greeley, Colo., and the Denver offense has gathered for a Sunday-night meeting at training camp. Before he begins to go over the playbook, offensive coordinator Gary Kubiak has a pointed message for newcomers to the team and a reminder for the holdovers. "You receivers and tight ends have got to pay more attention to your blocking," Kubiak says. "The difference between a good running football team and a great running football team is the receivers. The difference between an eight-yard run and a 30-yard run is your blocking."

That's one of the keystones of the Broncos' running game, the most dominant in football. Since Shanahan took over as coach in 1995, no team has rushed for as many yards as Denver (chart, page 101). Nor has any team scored as many points or won as many Super Bowls.

There is no conventional NFL wisdom at work in the Broncos' system, no trace of the popular belief that the line must be stocked with 350-pound draftees who can pancake the defensive front seven, no absolute need for a franchise back to make the game plan work. Shanahan's fresh line of thinking is long overdue in what has become a copycat league. His system employs light, athletic linemen who can be schooled from ground zero by the fanatical (and now semiretired) Gibbs, himself an invaluable element in Denver's success. The system is designed for the midsized back, maybe 5'11" and 220 pounds, a punishing runner who needs good but not exceptional speed. The east-west runner is out; north-south is in. The system doesn't tolerate great pass catchers who won't block ( Anthony Miller, for example, a free-agent pickup in 1994) and opens its arms to unknown small-college receivers who will (like Smith, out of Missouri Southern).

The statistics are daunting. In each of the last three seasons Shanahan has called on a different player to carry the rushing load. Each back responded with a big year (chart, right). Terrell Davis started the run in 1998 with a career-high 2,008 yards. The following season Olandis Gary gained 1,159 in 12 games after Davis went down with a knee injury. Last year Anderson rushed for 1,487 and was the NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year.

Before Shanahan's arrival, the Broncos had struggled to develop a running game to complement the skills of John Elway. In fact, in 15 of the 20 previous seasons Denver didn't even have a 1,000-yard ground gainer. Here's how Shanahan and the Broncos changed that.

Mining talent. Before Denver's annual predraft meeting in March, Shanahan tells his coaches and scouts not to read draftnik publications or news accounts of who's hot and who's not. "If I trust the opinion of my coaches and scouts, why would I want them to tell me what some other team thinks about a player?" he says. The Broncos spend six weeks on player evaluation. In the first four weeks each position coach, working with a list of prospects supplied by the scouting department, looks at the leading college players at his position, ranking them 1 to 35. In the fifth week offensive and defensive coaches meet separately to discuss their ratings. In the final week the entire coaching and scouting staffs convene to finalize ratings of each player.

This process led to Denver's using a sixth-round pick in the 1995 draft on Davis, a Georgia back who was the 21st runner chosen that year, and a fourth-round selection in '99 on Gary, another Bulldog. Even for the Broncos, Anderson was a stretch. He played the drums for his high school band in Fairfield, S.C., then did a four-year hitch in the Marines. Two years as a running back at Mount San Jacinto Community College in San Jacinto, Calif., convinced him that he should devote himself to football, but after two 1,000-yard seasons at Utah he was still a marginal NFL prospect. "I brought up Anderson's name to the staff," recalls running backs coach Bobby Turner, "and they all looked at me like, He's 26? Played in the band? A Marine for four years? But a lot of times, you draft a great back, and he turns out to be an east-west runner. Plus he might not be a good, or willing, blocker. Mike, like Olandis and Terrell, came here very coachable."