Broncos, Shanahan Are Fit to Be Kings

What if Al Davis had been more committed to excellence in the late ‘80s than to his own ego, allowing his coach, Mike Shanahan, to actually coach?

The Los Angeles Raiders would have maintained their record as professional sports’ winningest team, becoming the team of the ‘90s with one Super Bowl championship after another while creating a legion of loyal fans to fill a new, state-of-the-art stadium at Hollywood Park.

The Denver Broncos? They would have searched for the right coach--Art Shell? Mike White? Joe Bugel?--for John Elway until he gave up and retired before winning even one Lombardi Trophy. The fans would have deserted them and refused to authorize the public funding of a new stadium, the team would have moved to Houston and, today, it would be Denver instead of Los Angeles appealing to NFL owners for an expansion team.

Feel free to snap your fingers at any time and interrupt my fantasy. Of course, it’s impossible to prove that a successful union between Davis and Shanahan would have so altered professional football history.

It is believable, though, because, in the years since Davis jettisoned his bright, young head coach four games into the 1989 season, Shanahan has become the NFL’s best.

If the line of questioning at Shanahan’s Monday morning news conference, which began about 10 hours after his Broncos had won Super Bowl XXXIII, is used as evidence, some in the media are ready to anoint him as one of the best ever at the relatively young age of 46.

“I don’t know,” he said. “A number of people have asked me about that. Just to be associated with some of the names I’ve heard puts me in awe. To be mentioned with others of that caliber is beyond belief to me.”

Those names include Vince Lombardi, Don Shula, Chuck Noll, Bill Walsh and Jimmy Johnson because they are coaches who have won consecutive Super Bowls. Shanahan added his name to that exclusive list Sunday night.

One person who isn’t surprised is Gil Brandt, the former Dallas Cowboy player-personnel guru who was recognized for years as the NFL’s best at spotting potential in young coaches as well as players.

Shanahan was the offensive coordinator at the University of Minnesota in 1979 when Brandt touted him to Dallas General Manager Tex Schramm.

After meeting Shanahan a short time later, Schramm turned to Brandt and said, “Him? He’s just a young kid.”

He still was nine years later when Davis made Shanahan, at 35, the NFL’s youngest head coach.

In retrospect, Shanahan believes that he was too young, maybe, to be the head coach of a veteran NFL team and certainly to deal with Davis.

He might never be old enough for the latter. But he further developed his understanding of coaching, particularly of the West Coast offense, as the San Francisco 49ers’ offensive coordinator from 1992-94, which included a victory in Super Bowl XXIX. In his spare time, he took lessons in the salary cap and other management formulas from 49er President Carmen Policy that had been passed down from Walsh.

By the time Shanahan returned to Denver in 1995 to replace Dan Reeves, his mentor during two assistant coaching stints with the Broncos, he knew how to build and maintain a team as well as coach one.

“There’s no one in the NFL today who is on Shanahan’s level, unless it’s Mike Holmgren,” Brandt said here Monday.

Shanahan and Holmgren met in last year’s Super Bowl. Decided underdogs, the Broncos won, 31-24, in a game in which Shanahan was perceived by many experts to have out-coached Holmgren. In particular, the Bronco coach is given credit for devising an offensive scheme to neutralize the blitzing of the Packers’ LeRoy Butler.

On Sunday night at Pro Player Stadium, Shanahan again gave the Broncos the coaching edge, this time over Reeves, with a formation that called for both running backs to line up wide to counter the Falcons’ emphasis on stopping the run. That also put the game in the hands of quarterback John Elway, who responded with an MVP performance.

Because of his inventiveness, Shanahan is known among the Denver media as “the Mastermind.”

He dislikes the nickname because of the implication that he is single-minded, a notion that his wife disputes with stories about his adventures on his Harley-Davidson.

He also insists that he spends no more than 30 hours each week developing the game plan, delegating much of the responsibility for preparing the team to his assistant coaches.

“Part of Tom Landry’s success is that he had strong assistants,” Brandt said. “Guys like Dan Reeves, Mike Ditka and Gene Stallings weren’t yes men. Shanahan doesn’t have yes men around him, either.”

Shanahan isn’t particularly popular with other NFL coaches because of the perception that he undermined Reeves as Denver’s offensive coordinator in 1991 by turning Elway against him. Reeves, who is popular, reinforced that perception with his comments before the Super Bowl.

But few coaches have assistants more loyal than Shanahan’s. He didn’t lose one after last season and probably won’t lose one after this season, although he said Monday that he is aware a couple were informally contacted before the Super Bowl, a possible violation of NFL rules.

“I’m looking for some extra draft choices,” he said, referring to the NFL’s penalty for tampering.

Pausing to wait for laughs that didn’t come, Shanahan said, “That’s a joke. Lighten up.”

When a coach has to announce he’s telling a joke, he’s the one who should lighten up.

Perhaps it would help him relax if he knew Elway was returning for another season. On the morning after the victory, Shanahan said it was still his “gut feeling” that his quarterback will retire, but the coach was heartened by Elway’s interest in becoming the first quarterback to win three consecutive Super Bowls.

That, in turn, would make Shanahan the first coach to win the game in three consecutive seasons, although Lombardi won the NFL championship and the first two Super Bowls.

With or without Elway, Shanahan has already let the Broncos know that the goal for next season will be the same as it was for this one, to win it all.

Moments after Super Bowl XXXIII, Shanahan gathered his players around him in the dressing room and said, “Our off-season [training] program starts tomorrow.”

Most laughed, but not all. He was joking, wasn’t he?

Randy Harvey can be reached at randy.harvey@latimes.com.

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DOWNER: National television rating was one of lowest for Super Bowl. Page 8