Reeves Has Story With Right Idea but Bad Ending

The good guy is supposed to win, overcome the odds and be rewarded for persevering.

That’s what this Hollywood setting they call a Super Bowl is all about, letting the guy who underwent open-heart surgery six weeks ago win the day and get what he deserves.

He’s not supposed to get a call from his team leader hours before Super Bowl XXXIII saying he has embarrassed himself, his family and his teammates, the most unlikely guy to become a distraction, but now sabotaging Dan Reeves’ spotlight chance for vindication.

Eugene Robinson has won his Super Bowl--two years ago in Green Bay--and while he will pack his own misery for years to come, Reeves deserves better.

He worked his magic taking John Elway and a cast of throwaways to three Super Bowls, only to lose each one, but not only fall in defeat, but get crushed by a collective score of 136-40.

“It’s is the lowest of lows to lose a Super Bowl,” he said upon reflection.

But surely he must have perspective now, a man lying on a hospital gurney six weeks ago wondering if he will be alive when he next wakes up.

“No, it still hurts just as badly as the other three,” he says. “Just as bad.”

He has done a radio show in the Falcons’ locker room after making his way through the chaotic Denver celebration on the field, and now he has a long walk through the bowels of Pro Player Stadium to the interview area--just past the waiting hordes for Elway, the game’s MVP, and Mike Shanahan.

Will he ever make it to the big room--to stand there before everyone and soak in the adulation? Will he ever know such satisfaction?

“Our whole society is built on competition; I love competition,” he said. “But somebody has to be a loser.”

That’s how he felt Sunday night, shrugging aside the well-meaning pats on the back for a nice try, and saying it over and over.

“We lost . . . we lost.”

Fired in Denver, he went to the New York Giants, where he was fired again, finishing 7-9 in Atlanta as Shanahan and Elway won a Super Bowl together, a slap in the face just as stinging as Jim Fassel’s selection as coach of the year after taking over the Giants.

As hurt as he was, he said later, his wife took it harder. He went home every day from training camp that first year in New York, he said, to console his wife, afraid that depression might make her ill.

But she recovered and so did he, moving closer to his Americus, Ga., roots in Atlanta, overcoming a 1-7 start and whispers that he had lost it, to propel the Falcons to a division title in his second year on the job.

And now the Super Bowl--an impossible dream, you would think, for anyone taking on the job as coach of the Falcons, but Reeves did it. He turned around this wretched franchise, giving the NFL its feel-good story of the year.

And this was his chance to jab an “I told you so” finger in the face of Elway and Shanahan, but no one knows the quality of competition better than Reeves.

He trained Elway, “and he’s beaten me now twice, and for some reason, he’s played his very best in those games.”

There is still bewilderment in Reeves as to why there remains such a gap between himself and his quarterback. He looks in the mirror and sees himself as a compassionate demanding football coach. Elway and players who have played for him see a demanding football coach.

If it’s a two-way mirror, the kind they have in police stations, that’s Shanahan standing behind it and making faces at Reeves. Now there’s where the real animosity rests, and it’s Shanahan angry and bitter at Reeves because Reeves’ criticism and charges of insubordination have tarnished his reputation.

After Denver beat Atlanta in the regular season last year, Elway left the field without shaking Reeves’ hand. It happened again in Super Bowl XXXIII, but Reeves sought him out in the interview room, took his hand and offered congratulations.

He also sought out Shanahan: “I talked to Mike after the game and congratulated him on a great win and also on the record. When you win the most football games in NFL history in a three-year span of time, you’ve done a tremendous job as an organization and a coach.”

There is no consolation, he said. “They never get any easier. They all hurt,” he said, declining to focus on the miracle achieved in just being here. “It’s a huge disappointment. You get to this game and you do it for a reason--to win.”

He has been to nine Super Bowls as a player, assistant coach and head coach--more than anyone else ever involved in the sport--but has won only twice. It’s a feeling he knows well, and something he warned his players about after their NFC Championship win over Minnesota two weeks ago.

“I told them how difficult it was going to be and how bad you are going to feel if you lose it,” he said. “But they have an awful lot to be proud about; we have come a long way.”

So he has--from being the youngest head coach in the league at age 37 in Denver to the NFL’s winningest active coach with 172 wins, 125 defeats and 1 tie. But he hasn’t won the Super Bowl as a head coach, some of the voters for the Hall of Fame already surmising that he might have a difficult time joining Lawrence Taylor unless one day his luck changes.

“We’re going to try and get the home-field advantage next year,” he said with a closing grin. “Maybe we can be the home team in the Atlanta Super Bowl next year.”

Now that would really be Hollywood happy ending.