When Kirk Cousins calls his first play in the Falcons’ huddle on Sunday against the Saints (1 p.m. ET, FOX), Klint Kubiak will be scouring his New Orleans playsheet preparing for Derek Carr’s next series.
Between the lines of the Falcons and Saints playbooks – and up to one-third of offenses that utilize the modern Shanahan Offense in 2024 — is a fascinating story captured by veteran NFL writer Michael Silver.
On Tuesday, Silver teased his new book, The Why is Everything, on Barstool’s Pardon My Take podcast. Available on Oct. 1, the book is a story of football rivalry and revolution, weaving through a mesmerizing timeline connecting everyone pictured on its cover employed in 2012 by Dan Snyder’s Washington Redskins.
Silver said Tuesday the jumping-off point for the book was Mike Shanahan’s 1992 arrival in San Francisco.
“Mike Shanahan showed up as George Seifert’s offensive coordinator really trying to resurrect his career,” Silver said. “He’d been fired by Al Davis ingloriously after a couple of years as a young head coach. He’d been fired by Dan Reeves in Denver and accused of insubordination; basically, he and John Elway, Dan Reeves charged, had gone behind the head coach’s back. It was this big scandal. So, he was a broken man.”
With Joe Montana injured, Shanahan caused a paradigm shift by developing Steve Young, bridging from the way things had always been done to a willingness to creatively innovate. In doing so, Shanahan propelled Young to the Pro Football Hall of Fame and laid the foundation for the selection committee to potentially recommend Shanahan as a Class of 2025 coach finalist in mid-November.
Among other things, Silver in the book goes into detail on:
- How Shanahan paved the road for Denver’s back-to-back Super Bowl wins by taking the Bill Walsh West Coast Offense and adding an outside zone running scheme (creating the modern Shanahan Offense so many NFL teams use today).
- Fourteen years before Jayden Daniels’ coming-out party on Monday Night Football, how Mike and Kyle Shanahan innovated their Washington playbook to fit Robert Griffin III, the 2012 NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year.
- Why Falcons head coach Raheem Morris describes Kyle Shanahan and Sean McVay as “enemy friends.”
- Behind the scenes of that 2012 Washington season and how one game marked the beginning of the end for a staff with so many future NFL head coaches. And, why Mike Shanahan recommended Washington trade Griffin after his rookie year – then recommended at his exit interview a year later, after Snyder fired him, why Washington should trade Cousins.
- Why Kyle Shanahan couldn’t shake dysfunction through his offensive-coordinator stops at Cleveland and Atlanta, and the role Matt LaFleur played in grounding a conflict between Shanahan and Matt Ryan prior to the quarterback’s MVP and Super Bowl season in 2016.
- How the Shanahans tried to lure Peyton Manning to Washington in 2012.
- And, in the 2022 offseason after San Francisco drafted Trey Lance No. 3 overall, how Mike Shanahan was weirdly interested in their 262nd-overall choice, Brock Purdy, telling the 49ers they shouldn’t let Purdy out of their building.