Shanahan has brought Broncos back into contention

	With a paucity of attention, Mike Shanahan has rebuilt the Broncos into a balanced Super Bowl contender this season. Doug Pensinger/Getty Imag
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When you have just disembarked from an airplane, checked into a plush hotel room and finally let go of your roller bag, what is the first thing you typically do? Do you kick off your shoes, plop onto the bed and reach for the TV remote? Do you head for the bathroom, wash your face and sample the complimentary mouthwash? Turn on the laptop and get online? Call your spouse and insist, "I miss you already"?

If you were Mike Shanahan last Friday afternoon, the answer was, none of the above. Instead, immediately upon entering his 15th floor suite at the Hyatt Regency La Jolla, the Denver Broncos coach reached into an ice-filled bucket, pulled out a couple of Bud Lights and handed me a happy-hour surprise.

And you wonder why, in an oft-chided headline for an SI feature story I wrote in 1997, he was dubbed the Mastermind? On the eve of his team's 23-7 defeat of the San Diego Chargers, a meaningless game that closed out a 13-3 regular season and positioned the decidedly hype-deficient Broncos as a stealth Super Bowl contender, Shanahan was loose, lighthearted and even nostalgic.

For the next half-hour, it felt as though Shanahan and I went back in time -- eight years, to be exact. In January 1998 we had talked frequently in the same hotel, which housed the Broncos as they prepared to face the Green Bay Packers in Super Bowl XXXII.

When I reminded him of one of that week's bizarre sideshows -- a man impersonating then-Denver cornerback Tyrone Braxton checked into the hotel and, in an apparent attempt to impress several female companions, ran up a hefty bill before being revealed as an impostor -- Shanahan laughed and joked, "For all I knew that was one of Tyrone's buddies having a little fun."

The Broncos, of course, had nothing but fun on that Super Sunday, stunning the Packers to break the AFC's 13-year losing streak and capture the first of consecutive NFL championships. I can still vividly recall riding in the backseat of a town car headed toward the San Diego Chargers' practice facility in Mission Valley two days before the game, listening semi-skeptically as Shanahan lay out a blueprint for defeating the heavily favored defending champions. That, I'm fairly certain, was the last time I doubted this particular coach.

Back then, even in the typically gripe-filled confines of the locker room, Shanahan was viewed more as a bro than as a boss. "I've never been in a situation quite like that," recalls defensive end Trevor Pryce, a ninth-year veteran. "When Mike was coaching those two Super Bowl teams, it was almost like he became one of the players. You forgot he was a coach. Instead of seeing him and worrying about how you acted and wondering, 'If I mess up, is he gonna cut me?' it's like you didn't even know he was there."