Shanahan’s Firing Pays for Broncos : Pro Football: Former Raider coach has revived Denver’s passing game. He intimates his methods might have turned L.A. in right direction, too.

You’re bright, ambitious, with eyes that sparkle like the dew, at 35 the NFL’s youngest coach.

But it doesn’t go exactly the way you had hoped. You’re as welcome as a man from Mars at a Daughters of the American Revolution meeting.

At 37, you’re grayer, wiser . . . and you’re history.

This is your life, Mike Shanahan.

It’s homecoming for the former Raider coach who has returned to his old assistant’s job with the Denver Broncos.

Sometimes things don’t go the way anyone plans. Who would have dreamed that Al Davis would be bankrolling a Denver assistant to dig John Elway out of his slump?

Elway had thrown five touchdown passes and had eight passes intercepted, but he’s at nine and six since Shanahan returned from the Raiders. The Broncos are paying Shanahan about $50,000 a year, with Davis still on the hook for the balance of his estimated $325,000 salary through next season.

Stung by his firing, Shanahan left town without comment, but he got on a conference hookup Wednesday from Denver in advance of Sunday’s game with the Raiders, to relive his brief but eventful Raider career.

Did he think he had been treated fairly?

“It really doesn’t matter how I was treated,” Shanahan said. “The bottom line is, Al Davis owns the football team. He’s been quite successful. He’s won world championships. He owns the team and he’s got the prerogative to do what he wants. He made a decision to go in a different direction.”

He didn’t actually answer that question, did he?

To be kind to both sides, let’s just say neither knew what he was getting into.

The Raiders were advertised to Shanahan as a football organization, with an ex-coach for a boss, who said he wanted a fresh approach.

Davis thought there was something in his playbook worth keeping.

Shanahan has said privately that he made only one commitment: that he wouldn’t throw out anything without thinking about it first. So he thought about it. Then he threw a lot out.

Davis couldn’t believe what he was looking at.

Shanahan thought that he would have some time to prove himself.

Davis decided this freshness stuff wasn’t necessary, after all, and pulled the plug at 20 months.

The Raiders, then 1-3, stormed to 5-4 under Art Shell. They’re now 6-6.

“To me, it’s kind of similar to the year before, when we started out 2-4 and wound up 6-5 (before finishing 7-9),” Shanahan said, noting the subsequent returns of Howie Long, Scott Davis and Jerry Robinson, the acquisition of Mike Harden, the re-signing of Linden King.

“Not to take anything away from Art or the organization, because they’re playing with a lot of enthusiasm. I’m sure with Al’s support that there’s a lot of enthusiasm and a lot of momentum that wasn’t there before.”

Ironically, Shanahan was fired more for the failures of the defense, a unit he had little to do with, either in coaching, which was handled by coordinator Dave Adolph, or in personnel, where Davis and Adolph made the decisions. The unit was injury-racked, auditioned starting linebackers weekly and blew two fourth-quarter leads, or Shanahan might have been 3-1.

Actually, Shanahan was fired not because of his record, but because Davis couldn’t abide a young man intent on doing it his own way.

Or as one Raider source quotes Davis as saying in 1988, the night he convened a late-night coaches’ meeting after a wipeout at the hands of the Cincinnati Bengals:

“This is mah . . . life they’re . . . with.”

Was there another tack Shanahan might have taken?

Translation: Could players have gone on sitting on their helmets, spitting sunflower seeds and being Raiders?

“You go into a job as an assistant coach, you’ve been in a lot of different programs, you do some things you feel need to be done,” Shanahan said. “You go in that direction. And sometimes things don’t always work out.

“We went through some tough times. We went through a time when I first started when we changed eight people on offense and eight on defense. I think in the year and a half I was there, we made some big strides. Right now, I think the team is very strong. I think you’ll see the Raiders play well for many years to come. Hopefully, not too well.”

Who would have thought it?

Under the Bronco logo on one chest, a heart still beats for the silver and black.

“I wouldn’t be honest if I told you I didn’t have a strong feeling toward a lot of the players,” Shanahan said. “Even though you’re going against the Raiders right now.

“I think of Marcus Allen, Steve Smith, (Steve) Beuerlein, (Jay) Schroeder, (Steve) Wisniewski, (Don) Mosebar, (Mike) Dyal, (Bruce) Wilkerson, all the receivers. On defense, I don’t care if it’s (Terry) McDaniel or (Vann) McElroy or (Bob) Golic, or (Lionel) Washington or a Greg Townsend. People who faced adversity and kept on working through it and didn’t get down. Now you see them playing well, so you do take pride in those things. Sometimes it doesn’t happen overnight.”

About this new Raider direction--is it real or is it cosmetic?

“It doesn’t matter how I feel,” Shanahan said. “It matters what Al Davis feels. I think, when I do look at the film, I see a lot of the terminology and a lot of things we did before. I think you always take pride in the quarterback going back and going through the right progression and people executing.”

The day after Shanahan was fired, Dan Reeves offered him a job. Shanahan waited for the shock to wear off and accepted two weeks later.

In Shanahan’s first game back, Elway, who hadn’t thrown a touchdown pass in two weeks, threw two late ones in a comeback victory at Seattle.

“I think the person that missed Mike most was Elway,” Bronco safety Dennis Smith said. “They had such a great relationship. Elway’s improvement was like day and night, just having him back. More than what he did to the offense, just emotionally having him back.”

An acknowledged ace assistant, Shanahan hopes to be a head coach again.

As Nietzsche said, anything that doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

Now Shanahan knows, sometimes it doesn’t happen for you, but to you.