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Living On The Edge

Sporting News, The, Feb 1, 1999 by Paul Attner

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What they see mostly is the Shanahan depicted in an 8 by 10-foot photograph on the wall outside his office. The picture, selected personally by Bowlen, shows a close-up of Shanahan on the sideline, his eyes blazing with anger, his mouth open and curled. This is the Shanahan who despises wasted motion, who expects perfection, who is obsessed with the very idea of success, who relies less on physical and motivational intimidation--he'll rarely resort to the blatant mind games employed by Parcells or Johnson, or scream in the face of players--and more on cocky confidence built from thorough preparation and an air of invincibility.

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"It's absolutely Mike the coach," howls Peggy about the mural. She is sitting in a meeting room near her husband's office, no more than 15 strides from that picture, which hovers as a guard to the inner sanctum. "He saw it and didn't like it, but I said, `Mike, that's you. That's how you look.'" Peggy and Cindi Lowe, Shanahan's secretary, wonder what must go through a player's mind when he's summoned to the coach's office and must first look at that angry man.

"No wonder," Shanahan says, "no one comes to see me anymore."

It is those eyes that do his disciplinary work. Shanahan has a thin face, with pointed features, and he is moderate in stature, average by normal standards in both height and build. But in his out-of-proportion world, he is strikingly slight. There is nothing intimidating about the man, not until you reach those glimmering eyes.

"He has piercing eyes," 49ers longtime offensive line coach Bobb McKittrick says of Shanahan, who was San Francisco's offensive coordinator from 1992 to '94. "He has a distinctive look about him. He has hard eyes. Business eyes."

This is the Shanahan who can stop you dead with a flashing look, who can explode with a wicked temper, who can make emotional decisions with the startling, unemotional, single-minded detachment of all successful coaches, always putting winning, not his own popularity, first.

He is a players coach, but not in the pure definition of the term. He addresses his Broncos briefly every day, then they rarely hear his voice even in practices, where he stands back, observes and seemingly sees everything. And he hardly ever embarrasses them in front of their peers. He has no desire to be their buddy, even if John Elway is one of his closest friends. But they appreciate his ability to be upfront and straight with them: These are the rules, these are your duties. Do them the way we want and we win; do them the way you want and find another employer. He rewards them, too, for success, not only in big ways (he controls contracts), but in little things players love. Breakfast and lunch every day at the complex; no hitting in practices; no helmets on Fridays as long as they win; individual rooms at hotels; empty seats next to them on the team plane; no organized routine on Mondays.

This is the thinking Shanahan at work, the man obsessed with the minutia (at the start of training camp, the Broncos receive a notebook outlining everything they will do virtually every minute of every day for the rest of the season); the man McKittrick says is the best of all the assistant coaches he has worked with in his 20 years with the 49ers, a span that includes Mike Holmgren and Dennis Green and all the rest--a man so talented that McKittrick says, "He can look at a defense for a quarter and tell you accurately what their defensive philosophy is and what they are trying to do while others need to go over game after game and not be as accurate"; the man who has a notebook full of lectures on everything from public relations to distrust of management to dealing with two losses in a row to even the issue of a player trying to change another's religious beliefs--notes he uses for lectures throughout the season, attempting to be proactive about potential problems, talks that are so meaningful that receiver Rod Smith repeats some of them to his kids; the man with no toleration for 30-minute water-cooler breaks either for himself or his staff, but with days so in sync that appreciative Broncos coaches go home in the middle of the evening, never needing to sleep in their offices.

Living On The Edge

Sporting News, The, Feb 1, 1999 by Paul Attner

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