The Broncos won the Super Bowl in 1998 and managed to defend their title the following year. Although the club won half of their matches this season, several bad results towards the latter stages left them unable to be a part of the play-offs. During his time at the club, Shanahan won 146 matches and lost a total of 89.
Shanahan’s sacking has come as a shock to many, especially since he was such an experienced coach. Only Jeff Fisher, who became head coach of Tennessee in the early 1990s, had been serving as a coach for longer than Shanahan.
The owner of the Denver Broncos, Pat Bowlen, revealed that the decision to sack him was extremely “difficult” but one which simply had to be made. Bowlen still admires Shanahan as a man but believes that the club needed a change in their “football operations”.
The sacking of the Broncos coach came after three other clubs fired their managers within a very short space of time. The Detroit Lions, the Cleveland Browns, and the New York Jets all made the decision to sack their coaches and the resultant vacancies could be good news for Shanahan, who will presumably be in high demand now that he has left the Broncos.