Coaching Confidential: Inside the Fraternity of NFL Coaches (23 page)

Elway put together a wish list of ten teams. The Cowboys were on the list, but Accorsi asked Tom Landry, Tex Schramm, and Gil Brandt for future Hall of Fame defensive tackle Randy White, a local Baltimore favorite who had played at the University of Maryland; quarterback Danny White, who had guided Dallas to consecutive NFC championship games in his first two years after taking over for Roger Staubach; and two number one picks. It couldn’t hurt to ask. Dallas thought about it but ultimately refused to part with Randy White, and that ended the talks.

The Chargers and Raiders put together impressive offers. San
Diego owned three number one picks (the fifth, twentieth, and twenty-second) but would not give up the best of the three. Deal killer. The Raiders, selecting twenty-sixth, needed a higher pick to satisfy the Colts. They thought they had a deal completed to acquire the Bears’ pick at number six, which they would have sent to Baltimore along with their other choice. But when the Bears demanded defensive end Howie Long in return, the Raiders dropped out. If Accorsi had gotten Chicago’s pick, he was going to draft Marino.

The 1983 draft started at seven in the morning. Before things got under way, Colts owner Robert Irsay came to Accorsi with a trade proposal he had just received from New England: All Pro guard John Hannah and a swap of first-round picks. The Patriots were picking fifteenth. “I told him there would be two press conferences: one to announce the trade, one to announce my resignation,” Accorsi said.

Five minutes before the draft started, Accorsi told Irsay his plan.

“I’m going to take Elway one second after seven,” he said.

“Go do what you want to do,” Irsay replied.

Accorsi picked Elway and was willing to wait him out. Nothing against the kid, but Accorsi was protecting the franchise. That became irrelevant one week later. Accorsi was sitting on his couch watching an NBA playoff game on television when it was announced that Irsay had traded Elway to Denver. “I called Frank Kush and asked if he was watching because I think they just traded the quarterback,” Accorsi said.

In return, the Colts received tackle Chris Hinton, who had been picked three spots behind Elway, veteran quarterback Mark Herrmann, and a number one pick in 1984, which the Colts used on guard Ron Solt. In addition, Denver owner Edgar Kaiser agreed that the Broncos would play the Colts in preseason games at Mile High Stadium in 1984 and 1985. That meant a lot to Irsay. His fifty–fifty share of the gate receipts was worth $800,000.

“God, it was a slam dunk as far as I was concerned,” Reeves said.

Reeves had spoken to the Colts before the draft, but the asking price was much too high. Kaiser once tried to buy the Colts franchise from Irsay, and he had a relationship with him. The Broncos knew the Colts were interested in Hinton before the draft, and so it helped that they drafted him. Kaiser stayed in touch with Irsay after the draft and then called Reeves when he had the parameters worked out.

“You got a pencil?” Kaiser said.

He gave Reeves the terms.

“I would do that in a heartbeat,” Reeves said.

Elway was traded to Denver. Accorsi quit after the 1983 season and was hired by Art Modell in Cleveland in 1985 as the Browns’ general manager. The Mayflower trucks showed up at the Colts’ offices at 2 a.m. on March 29, 1984, and the Colts were off to Indianapolis.

The Elway deal never stopped haunting Accorsi. Elway prevented Accorsi’s Browns from getting to the Super Bowl with victories in the AFC championship game after the 1986, 1987, and 1989 seasons. The football gods made it up to Accorsi in 2004 when Eli Manning refused to play for the Chargers, who had the first pick, and traded him to the Giants, whose general manager at the time was Accorsi. Even though Accorsi retired one year before Manning won the first of his Super Bowl titles, he was the architect of the trade that brought Peyton’s little brother to New York. Here’s the irony: when Elway was hired to run the Broncos, he reached out to Accorsi to help him as a consultant.

Shanahan’s career path changed once he teamed up with Elway in 1984. Elway had a difficult rookie year and needed a mentor. Reeves named Elway the starter for the 1983 season opener in Pittsburgh, and it looked like it was the first time he’d ever stepped on a football field. He had played so well in the preseason, but the defenses he saw in the practice games were just the appetizer. The
Steelers served up a five-course dinner at Three Rivers Stadium and had Elway thoroughly confused. He threw for 14 yards and was sacked four times.

“I remember it didn’t last very long because I got benched at halftime. I was one for eight with a pick,” Elway said. “I wanted to click my heels together, and say, ‘Auntie Em, bring me home. You can have your signing bonus back; I don’t want to stare at Jack Lambert spitting and drooling at me anymore. What the hell have I gotten myself into?’ ”

It was the days before the NFL introduced radio helmets that allow the coach to communicate with the quarterback from the sidelines to send in the plays. Elway received the plays by hand signal or messenger. “He was just lucky to get a play off, much less look over and anticipate what the defense might do,” Reeves said.

Even though Elway showed only flashes of greatness his rookie year and was benched for a stretch in the middle of the season, the Broncos made the playoffs as a wild-card team with him as the starter. “By then, you knew you had something special,” Reeves said. “He was unbelievable.”

Shanahan struck gold in getting this job. It would be the starting point on his journey to being a head coach. He had spent nine years in college football and considered it a dream come true to work with Elway. They became close friends. They played a lot of golf together. Shanahan introduced Elway to lifting weights for the first time in his life. His father never had him lift weights in the football off-season because it would interfere with baseball. “He started off in the weight room as a complete novice,” Shanahan said.

Elway worked under the guidance of the Broncos’ conditioning coach, but Shanahan was constantly by his side. They started to build a relationship. Elway trusted Shanahan, and Shanahan became the buffer between Elway and Reeves. “He knew I was going to work him hard and do everything I could to make him
better,” Shanahan said. “He knew I cared about him, and he was willing to do the little things the right way.”

As Elway’s career took off, so did Shanahan’s. After the second of the Broncos’ three Super Bowl losses, Shanahan was offered the Los Angeles Raiders’ head coaching job by Al Davis in 1988. Davis rarely went outside the organization for key management hires. This certified Shanahan as special. He lasted four games into his second season before Davis fired him. He coached only twenty games for the Raiders and won eight. Davis didn’t give him much of a chance. “I think the first time I knew it wasn’t going to work is when he would come to practice and he would substitute guys,” Shanahan said. “He would come out and say, ‘You guys don’t have to practice.’ He took them out of a drill. That’s when I knew, OK, I won’t last long here. It was early—like the first five or six days of summer camp.”

As soon as Davis fired Shanahan early in the 1989 season, Reeves offered him the opportunity to come back to Denver to work with Elway again. He left the Raiders on bad terms—to the day Davis died in 2011, Shanahan claimed he still owed him money—and returning to Denver gave Shanahan an opportunity to restore his reputation and get some measure of revenge against Davis in the AFC West. The Broncos made it back to the Super Bowl in the season Shanahan returned but again were not competitive, losing 55–10 to the 49ers, the largest losing margin in Super Bowl history.

Shanahan’s relationship with Reeves had begun to deteriorate. Reeves felt Shanahan and Elway were scheming behind his back and tinkering with the game plan and suspected that too much of what was being said in staff meetings was being relayed to Elway through Shanahan. Newspaper stories detailing Elway’s dislike for Reeves caught Reeves by surprise, and he believed Shanahan knew but didn’t tell him. He felt Shanahan’s loyalty should have been to him, not to Elway. Shanahan was incredulous that Reeves
claimed to be oblivious to what seemed obvious: his quarterback despised him.

After the 1991 season, Reeves fired Shanahan, citing “insubordination.”

Reeves admitted he had no proof. Shanahan was stunned that Reeves questioned his integrity. “I got tired of hearing about it,” Shanahan said. “I thought I was close to Dan. I was probably Dan’s best friend. We played golf together. We did all those things. I am the one that got Dan and John together when they were having the problem. I said, ‘Hey, you don’t like him, he doesn’t like you. You are two grown men; let’s try to solve this problem.’ I was kind of the buffer. When you are the buffer as an assistant coach, especially as a coordinator, it doesn’t always work out well between the head coach and the coordinator.”

The years have not softened the hard feelings. “I’ve been fired a few times, and it’s hard for me to have the same feeling for people who fired me, and I fired him,” Reeves said. “That’s never going to change.”

Shanahan had been fired by Davis, then fired by Reeves. He needed a gentle landing spot. Mike Holmgren had just accepted the job as the Packers’ head coach, and so his job as the 49ers’ offensive coordinator was open. Montana was still recovering from elbow surgery, but Steve Young was establishing himself as one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL. The 49ers were going to be a Super Bowl contender in 1992, and Shanahan knew the 49ers were a classy organization that did things the right way. After his experience with Davis and then having his relationship with Reeves blow up over Elway, he needed less drama and more football. George Seifert offered him the job. San Francisco was the perfect place at the perfect time.

His departure meant that Reeves and Elway were left to settle their problems on their own. In Shanahan’s last season as an assistant in Denver, the Broncos were 12–4 and lost to the Bills in the AFC championship game. They dropped to 8–8 in 1992
and didn’t make the playoffs. Broncos owner Pat Bowlen stunned Reeves by firing him. He had been there twelve seasons and had gone to three Super Bowls but had a lousy relationship with the franchise quarterback—he once was rumored to have considered trading him to the Redskins—and angered him even further when he selected twenty-year-old UCLA quarterback Tommy Maddox in the first round of what turned out to be his final draft in Denver.

In Shanahan’s first season in San Francisco, Young was voted the most valuable player in the NFL and the 49ers went to the NFC championship game, where they were upset by the Cowboys at Candlestick Park. Shanahan had hardly settled into the Bay Area when Bowlen called. He had fired Reeves and wanted Shanahan to return to Denver as the head coach. Finally, Shanahan could work with Elway without having Reeves’s paranoia get in the way. Bowlen and Shanahan had an excellent relationship. Shanahan and Elway were close, probably too close for a player and a coach, but it was better than the alternative of not talking.

There was a problem. Shanahan didn’t want the job. Not yet, anyway. He was bitter about the way things had ended for him with Reeves. He didn’t like the perception that he’d undermined the head coach. He didn’t share Bowlen’s belief that the Broncos were close to winning a Super Bowl. He wasn’t happy with the budget Bowlen had given him for assistant coaches. Plus, he had just gotten to San Francisco and wasn’t ready to pack up. He felt he had made more than a one-year commitment to the 49ers.

He rejected Bowlen’s offer. Bowlen then promoted defensive coordinator Wade Phillips. Shanahan didn’t want anybody saying he was targeting Reeves’s job all along. “I got so tired of listening to that crap,” Shanahan said. “I just didn’t like what went on with Dan, the rumors about me wanting to come back and my relationship with John. I didn’t feel comfortable going back.”

Elway was angry. How could Shanahan do this to him? He was finally free of Reeves and thought his good friend was on his way back to Denver. It wasn’t easy for Shanahan to break the
news to Elway. He felt he couldn’t give Elway the real reason he was staying in San Francisco—he was still bitter. He didn’t think it would be fair to the organization. So he made something up. “This is an interesting story,” Shanahan said. “I never really told this story to anybody.”

He leaned back in his chair in the head coach’s office at Redskins Park—he was hired by Washington in 2010—and relayed the conversation he’d had with Elway.

“Hey, John,” Shanahan said.

“Why aren’t you coming?” Elway said.

“John, it’s a little bit financial, and they are not willing to make that commitment,” Shanahan said.

“Well, what is it?” Elway said.

“I don’t want to go down there,” Shanahan said.

“No, I want to know what it is,” Elway said.

Shanahan lied. He told Elway that Bowlen’s financial package was insufficient and he wanted a couple more courtesy cars than Bowlen was offering.

“We’re probably $300,000 off on the total package,” Shanahan said.

“How many years?” Elway said.

“Three or four years,” Shanahan said.

“That’s no problem. I will take care of that,” Elway said.

Elway was prepared to write a $300,000 check to Mike Shanahan.

Twenty years later, as the executive vice president of football operations for the Broncos, Elway remembers trying to buy Shanahan’s way back to Denver by offering to pay the difference between Bowlen’s offer and what Shanahan said he wanted. “When he turned that down, I knew it was something else,” Elway said.

Elway could afford the $300,000. He was about to sign a four-year $20 million contract. But paying part of the salary of the head coach not only would have been unprecedented, it would have caused friction in the locker room when his teammates
found out. And they would find out. “He was going to pay me out of his salary what I was short,” Shanahan said. “That kind of gave you an idea how much he wanted to win. I had totally made up the financial stuff, thinking he would back off. He said, ‘No, no, I’ll take care of that. I got enough money. Money is done. Car is done.’ He didn’t blink.”