Broncos' house of cards bound by a Bowe

ENGLEWOOD • One normal looking special-teams play last December ended up affecting the path of hundreds of lives, especially in Denver.

What if Kansas City receiver Dwayne Bowe had caught an onside kick? There were other plays that cost the Broncos the AFC West title last year, but that one was black and white. If Bowe hangs onto the ball Dec. 14, the Chiefs beat San Diego and Denver clinches the AFC West. The Broncos would be defending that title starting today at Cincinnati.

And it was a routine play for Bowe.

“Generally, he makes a catch like that,” then-Chiefs coach Herman Edwards told the Kansas City Star.

However, the ball was jarred loose, San Diego recovered and won in the last minute. Denver lost later that day at Carolina and dropped the next two games as well, losing the division and missing the playoffs. The muffed onside kick was the domino that started one of the most shocking offseasons in Broncos history.

Maybe owner Pat Bowlen would have fired coach Mike Shanahan anyway — he said he thought about it for a while — but it’s a fairly safe assumption that Bowlen wouldn’t dump his longtime coach after a division title. Shanahan would likely be pacing the sidelines with Jay Cutler as his quarterback today at Cincinnati, while Kyle Orton prepared to lead the Bears against the Packers.

Every NFL team, and even some college teams, can probably say they felt some ripple effects from Denver this offseason.

Start with the coaches. If Bowe falls on the onside kick and Shanahan is still in Denver, Josh McDaniels probably would have gotten a coaching job somewhere else (maybe San Diego, which might have fired Norv Turner if the Chargers missed the playoffs). One of the 11 new coaches in the NFL wouldn’t have had an open spot to land.

Denver’s staff probably would have stayed at least mostly intact. Instead, 15 assistant coaches from last year are gone, replaced by 12 new faces. That’s 27 assistant coaches who can claim to be directly affected by Bowe’s fumble. And it’s almost impossible to count the other coaching dominoes — someone would have been Southern Cal’s offensive coordinator instead of Jeremy Bates, who left the Broncos after McDaniels announced he would call plays, for instance.

Denver’s roster would look entirely different. The Broncos have 35 new players, including practice squad and injured reserve. There’s no guarantee the old regime would have made any of the same moves. Three long-snappers alone were directly affected by Bowe’s miscue and the fallout — McDaniels brought in former Patriot Lonie Paxton, which led to Shanahan favorite Mike Leach being released and signing in Arizona, and displaced Cardinals snapper Nathan Hodel ended up in New England.

The draft would have been different — someone else probably would have picked running back Knowshon Moreno. Perhaps the Chargers, who would have picked ahead of Denver, would have selected him. The Broncos had another first-round pick from the Cutler trade, which they used on linebacker Robert Ayers. They wouldn’t have had that pick if Bowe caught the onside kick, because there was no chance Shanahan would have traded Cutler.

Plenty of coaches, players and scouts — and all their families — can look back and say their lives were changed dramatically by the result of one play.

“It’s crazy,” cornerback Champ Bailey said about the domino effect from last year. “That’s the reality of football. If you don’t win, things change.” 

SIX DEGREES

How did a recruiting firm in Waltham, Mass., lose an employee because of Dwayne Bowe’s fumbled onside kick last year? Follow this domino effect:

After Scott O’Brien was let go as Denver’s special-teams coach, Mike Priefer was hired from Kansas City. The Chiefs hired Dolphins assistant special-teams coach Steve Hoffman to replace Priefer.

Hoffman’s spot with Miami was filled by Darren Rizzi, who resigned as head coach at Rhode Island to take the job. Rhode Island hired Joe Trainer, who had just been hired as co-defensive coordinator at Bowling Green.

Mike Elko was Tennessee-Chattanooga’s coordinator, but left after just a few months at that job to replace Trainer at Bowling Green. Tennessee-Chattanooga hired Football Championship Subdivision Assumption College head coach Adam Fuller to replace Elko as defensive coordinator.

Cory Bailey then became Assumption College’s new head coach. According to Bailey’s profile on the networking site Linkedin, he was returning to football after spending the previous 15 months at Winter Wyman, a staffing and recruiting firm in Waltham, Mass.