Happy Days

In New York, where Reeves is considered a breath of fresh air, there seems to be mild astonishment at all this fuss in Denver. "I haven't heard one grumble from one player yet," says Giant quarterback Phil Simms.

In fact, Reeves was never a full-blown ogre in Denver. He was just old school: distant, stern and unapproachable. "He's a Tom Landry type," says Mecklenburg. "He's in charge, he sets the rules, and he's very successful." But the anxiety that Reeves nurtured among his players apparently began to cat at the veterans. "I had the opportunity to play in three Super Bowls because of his approach," Mecklenburg says. "But it was so intense, so much fear of failure. Once, we lost two or three in a row, and he took away our lunches." Mecklenburg spreads his huge hands as if to indicate that enough is enough.

That feeling had eventually spread to the club's management, and owner Pat Bowlen finally decided on a new direction for his team. For all their talk now, the players were by no means mutinous last year, and Bowlen wasn't likely to make a change just because his players had missed lunch. But Bowlen felt certain that a new approach was necessary if his team was going to see a Denver Super Bowl V.

The question was, Which approach would be better? Of Bowlen's two candidates for the coaching job, San Francisco 49er offensive coordinator Mike Shanahan was the more similar to Reeves. However, as a former quarterback coach in Denver, Shanahan did bring a working relationship with Elway to the table. Elway did not campaign for Shanahan, but neither did he mask his enthusiasm for his old coach. The other candidate was Phillips, mostly famous for being the son of former NFL head coach Bum Phillips but highly regarded around the league as the defensive coordinator in Denver, his most recent stop in a 17-year career.

The obvious move was to bring in Shanahan, not so much to restore lunch privileges as to retool the offense to take better advantage of Elway's magnificent arm. Reeves believes in a game that relies on defense, and his offense in Denver was so conservative that even when he did agree to use the shotgun formation, the Broncos often ran out of it. He neither drafted nor traded for top-notch offensive linemen, and, at the same time, insisted on the old-fashioned seven-step drop for Elway. That meant Elway needed even more time behind a line that couldn't protect him in the first place.

That Elway mounted any numbers at all was a result of Denver's predictable desperation in the fourth quarter. With two minutes remaining, the defense having kept the Broncos in the game, Reeves would unleash Elway. In his 10 years of playing for Reeves, Elway rallied the team for 31 fourth-quarter, game-saving drives. "That," says Elway, still disgusted, "was our philosophy."

There was a growing sense in Denver that the team might be better served if Elway's talents were employed through the entire game. "Dan had an offense that was very inflexible," says Kartz. "With all the other teams going to run-and-shoot offenses and three-step drops, ours was just antiquated."

Even linebackers recognized as much. "We'd grind it out," says Mecklenburg, "and every once in a while John would get to do something spectacular in the last two minutes. It's just a crime, the career John's had."

Elway, at 33, is keenly aware of his wasted talent. "It's been frustrating. People look at touchdown passes, and mine don't match up with Kelly or Marino or even Warren [Moon]. It was hard to argue with the first six years, but it got tough the last three or four years, when we just shut down the offense and played off our defense. I'd like to get the most out of what I do before it's too late. I mean, I'm no duckling anymore."

Shanahan would have been the man for the job. And he nearly was, but he reportedly turned down an offer from Bowlen because the money wasn't good enough. What actually happened remains murky because Bowlen, to this day, won't admit that Shanahan was his first choice.