They Won’t Let Go of Success : Dan Reeves: A fierce competitor, Bronco coach was willing to change personnel and his philosophy to get his team back on track.

As coach of the Denver Broncos, Dan Reeves has taken his team to three of the last four Super Bowls.

No other coach can make that statement.

Reeves, unhappily for him, is an AFC coach in an NFC era, so he hasn’t been a Super Bowl success story, yet.

But as a winning coach--leaving the Super Bowl out of it--he’s pretty impressive. The Broncos have made the NFL playoffs five times in Reeves’ nine seasons. And twice they just missed on tiebreakers after finishing 10-6 and 11-5.

That’s seven shots at the Super Bowl in nine seasons for the 45-year-old former Georgia farm boy, who has begun wearing glasses lately and exchanged his cowboy clothes for business suits, but otherwise could still pose for a Marlboro ad.

His achievements never surprise Reeves’ old friends, who remember him as the fiercest competitor they ever knew.

They remember, in particular, the night in 1965 that Reeves lost his shirt throwing darts in a California bar with a group of other Dallas Cowboys. It was the summer of his rookie year as an NFL halfback. He was then an undrafted, slow-footed free agent. Nobody gave him a chance to make the team.

“Danny didn’t have much money in those days,” former Cowboy safety Dennis Thurman said. “And he lost it all in one night, playing darts. Walked out of that bar without a cent.”

After practice the next day, Reeves proposed a return trip to the dart board, with the same stakes: a dime for any throw that hit the target, up to $1 for a bull’s-eye. He had borrowed a few dollars, and his teammates went back to the bar with him.

This time, Reeves took them all. Hitting one bull’s-eye after another, he walked away the big winner.

“He’d gone out and found a dart board somewhere and practiced all night, right up until breakfast,” Thurman said. “That’s the way Danny is. If you beat him once--at anything--he’ll put on the pads and work until he beats you.”

Thurman, one of the best defensive backs of his time, was an exceptionally talented player. Reeves, by contrast, a converted quarterback from the University of South Carolina, may have had less talent than any other pro halfback of his generation.

But Reeves’ determination was such that he lasted eight seasons in the NFL, 1965-72, and his craving to win was such that he even made himself into a star on two Dallas Super Bowl teams.

The fact is, Reeves can’t even go to a party without trying to win.

At dinner one night last spring during the league meetings at Palm Desert, he borrowed a dime and bet his friends $10 each that he could blow it off the table up into a water glass.

As usual, he won.

The trick is to set the dime on the edge of the table--and practice, practice, practice.

Reeves’ life is chock-full of long workdays and bonus paydays.

Walt Garrison, a former Dallas fullback who roomed four years with Reeves, said: “He’d sit up night after night going over (Coach) Tom Landry’s plays in the playbook until he had a complete understanding of the old man’s philosophy.

“I’ve known a lot of guys who love to win. The thing about Danny is that he works to win.”

That was never more evident than in the last 12 months. After two bitter Super Bowl defeats and a subsequent 8-8 season, Reeves changed his approach to football, fired his defensive coaches and spent the off-season at Denver working up a new way to play football.

Few coaches ever change philosophies. After mastering the game, neither Knute Rockne nor Vince Lombardi did. At Pittsburgh, Chuck Noll, who struggled all the way through the ‘80s, has continued to prepare his teams as he did in the ‘70s, when he won four Super Bowls.

The difference in Denver is that Reeves made some fundamental changes, in part on offense. Once a passing team, the Broncos leaned toward running this season, throwing 474 times, running 554.

Defensively, the Reeves revolution has been even more radical.

The Broncos in their first three Super Bowl seasons and through their 8-8 season had been the NFL’s most dedicated bend-don’t-break defensive team.

In one year’s time, they have switched to become an attacking team--one of the NFL’s most aggressive.

As instant aggressors, the Broncos allowed the fewest points in the league this season.

“It wasn’t easy to give up something that had worked well for a long time,” Reeves said. “But everyone could see our (‘88) weaknesses.”

The weaknesses were on the scoreboard. The ’88 Broncos once gave up 55 points. They twice gave up 42. One night against the Raiders, they couldn’t hold a 27-0 lead, losing, 30-27.

Something had to be done, although, under five successive Denver coaches, defensive coordinator Joe Collier had crafted one of the NFL’s most respected defenses.

“I couldn’t ask (Collier) to change,” Reeves said. “It’s hard to ask someone to change something that’s really their whole professional life.”

So Reeves made the change himself. He looked around for an experienced coordinator whose theories of aggressive defense jibed with his. Then he hired Wade Phillips, who had learned how to play offensive defense under his father, Bum, and later under Buddy Ryan.

The architect of modern defense, Ryan now coaches the Philadelphia Eagles.

In 1986, when Ryan coached defense for the Chicago Bear team that won Super Bowl XX, he was ahead of his time. The NFL’s rules had been changed to strongly favor offensive teams--with the outlawing of the Raider-style bump-and-run and the legalization of offensive holding--but few defensive coaches knew what to do about it.

Most didn’t realize that the new rules had awarded the passer unacceptably long periods of time to wait for his receivers. Most didn’t realize that nothing would obstruct a good modern pass offense but continuous heavy pressure on the passer.

A new era had arrived, and Ryan was the first to get in harmony with it. In the second wave was Phillips, followed by Reeves.

Reeves had what it took to part with a superior coach who had mastered the way to play defense in the bump-and-run era.

Maybe Reeves overreacted. Maybe Collier’s smaller, faster defensive players would be a better match for Joe Montana’s 49ers than this bunch. Maybe it will turn out that Reeves was dead wrong.

But as one Denver executive said: “The thing about Dan is that he has the character to do what his head asks him to do.”

Some of Dan Reeves’ friends think his passion for the active life is a reaction to a sickly childhood.

“He was in bed most of the time until he was 6 years old,” his mother said. “I remember getting down on my knees and praying he’d live. It was a fever of some kind.”

Said Dan: “They put me in a hospital for a needle every four hours, day and night. Every shot, the nurse gave me a new car for my little old plastic train, and eventually that train ran around my bed three times. I set the county record for most needles in the rear end.”

By his senior year in high school, Reeves was a three-sport star, pitching Americus, Ga., to the state baseball championship.

“As a pitcher, Dan was very fast and very wild,” his cousin Jerry, a banker in Americus, Ga., said. “It was pretty funny, the headline they put in the paper one day: “D. Reeves Pitches Shutout as Americus Wins, 15-13.”

Since his years at South Carolina, Reeves’ best friend has been Marty Rosen, a Brooklyn businessman who is in New Orleans this week for his third Super Bowl.

“I was the only Jewish football player they’d ever seen at South Carolina, and Danny was a pure down-South cracker,” Rosen said. “The first six weeks I knew him, we couldn’t understand a word the other said. We had to use sign language.”

Rosen remembers the play that made a name for Reeves, a flat pass from behind the South Carolina goal line to a flanker who was immediately tackled in the end zone. “It’s still in the book as the only forward pass ever completed for a safety,” he said. “We’re all very proud of Danny.”

Said Reeves: “If you’re going to set a record, I’ve always felt you should set one that would last awhile.”

Reeves’ parents are still in Georgia, although his father, Edd, is now too ill to work the farm.

“A remarkable man, Edd Reeves,” Rosen said, remembering weekends at the Reeves’ farm. “Even when we partied all night Saturday night, he’d get Dan and me up for church. Made us wear coats and ties too.”

As a college home, Reeves never wanted South Carolina. From first grade onward, his goal was to play for his state university, his mother said. But no Georgia recruiter had heard of him until the annual state high school all-star game--of which he was voted MVP.

Thereafter, the Bulldogs recruited him heavily. And one night at supper, as Ann Reeves tells it, Dan’s father brought it up.

“Like to see you here at Georgia,” Edd Reeves said.

“I’d like for that too, Daddy,” Dan said.

“By the way, wasn’t Carolina the only school that came after you last month?”

“Well, yes, Daddy, that’s sure enough true.”

“And didn’t you give your word to those folks?”

“Yes, Daddy, I sure enough did.”

“Well, then, son, where you reckon you’re a-going?”

“I’m going to South Carolina, Daddy.”

Dan Reeves had spent his first 18 years on the family farm. He then returned, after football at South Carolina, to marry a Georgian, Pamela White, who was to become the mother of his three children. Two of them are at SMU.

Her game is tennis.

“I try to get him out for mixed doubles in the off-season,” Pam Reeves said. “Tennis is a social game, but Dan is such a competitor. He doesn’t have much fun because it hurts him so much to say: ‘Good shot.’ He’d rather bet you $5 that he can bounce a tennis ball over the clubhouse.”