THE NFL / BOB OATES : Shanahan and Turner Make Moves Into an Elite Quintet of Coaches

Reckoned on ability to get the most out of football players, the NFL’s top five coaches might be Jimmy Johnson, Miami; Bill Cowher, Pittsburgh; Mike Shanahan, Denver; Norv Turner, Washington, and George Seifert, San Francisco.

Underestimated until recently, two of the five, Shanahan and Turner, are new names in this elite group.

The guard hasn’t changed yet, but movement has been evident. There could be a day when Shanahan and Turner are the top two. Both have apprenticed as offensive overseers of Super Bowl champions-Turner for Johnson in Dallas and Shanahan for Seifert in San Francisco.

The other 1996 names in the coaches’ top 10 might be Mike Holmgren, Green Bay; Bill Parcells, New England; Jeff Fisher, Houston; Ray Rhodes, Philadelphia, and Marty Schottenheimer, Kansas City.

Of the younger coaches, Fisher and Dom Capers of Carolina have both shown top-five promise.

49ers retooling: Of the teams that are perhaps the NFL’s three most capable, two, Green Bay and Dallas, are winning with veterans. But when San Francisco advanced to 6-2 last Sunday as the NFL completed the first half of its 1996 schedule, three new 49ers made the decisive plays.

They are quarterback Jeff Brohm, the replacement for injured veterans Steve Young and Elvis Grbac; halfback Terry Kirby, who ran 49 yards with a pass from Brohm to set up the winning touchdown in the fourth quarter, and wide receiver Terrell Owens, the rookie who scored the touchdown that beat Houston, 10-9.

Taking a short pass from Brohm, Owens, who at 6-feet-2 is as rangy as Jerry Rice, made the kind of aggressive, tackle-breaking 20-yard run San Francisco had expected earlier from J.J. Stokes, who has been a disappointment.

With Owens, Kirby, Brohm, tight end Ted Popson and others, the 49ers, who have been winning for a record 15 NFL seasons-they are five time Super Bowl champions-could be retooling effectively again, as they did several years ago when the Steve Young generation smoothly succeeded the Joe Montana generation.

The club owner who keeps hiring the coaches and executives who find all these winners for San Francisco is Eddie DeBartolo, who continues as the NFL’s most underrated leader.

In the AFC, Shanahan has become the coach he is in considerable part because of his training with the 49ers.

One of several exponents of Bill Walsh’s West Coast offense, Shanahan is like the others in one respect.

“A strength of this-offense is constant change,” Walsh, now a 49er advisor, said the other day. “We all change it every year.”

Thus, Shanahan’s Denver team routed Kansas City last week, 34-7, with an approach that has seldom interested Walsh: the five-wide-receiver formation. There are no ballcarriers or backfield blockers in that formation, which, accordingly, must be used with care.

By using it recklessly, Pittsburgh lost the most recent Super Bowl to Dallas blitzers.

Against the Chiefs, the new Denver coach capitalized on the conservatism of the old Kansas City coach, Schottenheimer, who, as Shanahan had predicted in pregame Denver staff meetings, failed to adjust in time.

Sound strategy: Perhaps the most instructive way to look back on the Dallas Cowboys’ easy victory last week over Johnson’s Miami Dolphins, 29-10, is to remember that Johnson’s old players beat his new team.

During five years in Dallas, where he started 1-15 and finished in two Super Bowls, Johnson recruited most of the athletes who this time outperformed a Miami team that he has had less than a year to put together.

Who could-be surprised about that?

The first grudge game of the new Johnson era had nothing whatever to say about coaching competence-on either side-except strategically. With the inferior players, the Dolphins, when on defense, slowed Dallas with a game-long residence in the prevent defense.

That’s one of the good strategic ways for the weaker team to oppose obviously better players, who, if repeatedly forced to drive 80 yards five yards at a time, will often be restrained by their mistakes.

Afterward, strangely, even Johnson seemed to be fretting about the cushion--a wide one--that his defensive backs left continually for Dallas’ receivers. But it wasn’t their cushion that beat the Dolphins. It was their aptitude for football. They just don’t have enough. Yet.