As Mike Shanahan stares down 12 journalists, four TV cameras and a blitz of Monday afternoon questions at Broncos headquarters, he presses both palms firmly into his blue chair.
His tone never budges from telemarketer calm, and his answers are safer than a prevent defense. “It was a good handoff … It was a heck of a second quarter … It really doesn’t matter who starts.”
But when Shanahan steps out of the lights and into a dark hallway to chat with three reporters, his game face drains away. He laughs. He gossips. He jokes. He explains complicated schemes in fatherly tones. Suddenly, he’s just a guy on the next bar stool who really, really knows his football.
***
In a league where talk isn’t cheap, and it’s sometimes worthless, Shanahan is known as a coachspeak virtuoso. He fills airwaves and notebooks with “We made plays,” “He stepped up” and a recent blurb: “You have to get the ball into the end zone. That’s the key.”
“I call it calculated blandness,” says Sandy Clough, a sports radio war horse who has prodded and praised the Denver coach since the mid-1980s when Shanahan was a Broncos assistant. “He is one of the masters.
“And for those of us who have a chance to see him outside of that coachspeak mode, well, he knows that we know that he lapses into that. He does it as a matter of design.”
Or, borrowing a snippet of Shana-speak, “He does the little things that give his team a chance to win on Sundays.”
The game is simple: Keep the substance low and the word count high, offer sound bites that sort of answer the questions, but never reveal your team’s most sacred secrets – like the kink in Champ Bailey’s hamstring. Because the opposition is always listening.
“He is very smart, very careful and he knows how to get the message across or, sometimes, not say anything,” says Clough, who co-hosts an evening show on KKFN.
Shanahan, of course, has a lot to say. He’s merely selective about who gets to hear it. Even with those he trusts, however, his words are tactical, delivered with a football purpose.
“It’s very important for the team to know exactly how I feel. (But) I don’t necessarily have to wear my thoughts on my chest,” Shanahan says. “I’ve got a job to do, get these guys ready … Sometimes I do keep things in-house because I think they should be in-house.”
His brand of coachspeak seems to have roots in three places. For starters, he’s just being himself.
Like coaches who are known to cry (Kansas City’s Dick Vermeil), complain (New Orleans’ Jim Haslett) or confront (Dallas’ Bill Parcells), Shanahan says his dehydrated style comes from within.
“I think I am a little more guarded,” Shanahan says. “It’s just kind of my personality.”
Some close to the Broncos coach say Shanahan’s two seasons under the Raiders’ totalitarian owner, Al Davis – and his three seasons in San Francisco under Bill Walsh – schooled him in the art of discretion.
“He picked up some things from Davis, and also from Walsh, who was no friend of the media,” Clough says. “The people who cover the 49ers hated Walsh. He was secretive and disingenuous. He never quite out-and-out lied, but there would be a manipulative quality to him that people quickly saw through and grew tired of.
“Mike has observed many of these things, and he’s avoided the less toxic elements of those various personalities.”
Beyond that, there is a lot of spy in Shanahan. He mines the NFL grapevine for any hints about an upcoming team’s game plan, mood and health.
On other teams, assistant coaches or staffers read through the reams of press conference transcripts and player interviews that drift in from around the NFL. Shanahan tackles that task, setting aside about 30 minutes every morning to scan clips and quotes from his next six opponents.
“They are the people you’re playing. You want to know what their philosophies are, what they’re thinking,” Shanahan says.
***
A sportswriter phones the Oakland Raiders public relations office last week to request an interview.
“Sure, what about?” asks Raiders spokesman Mike Taylor.
“About NFL coaches and the media, how more coaches talk without really saying anything,” the sportswriter explains. “Can I speak with someone in your organization about how you all deal with the media?”
“No,” Taylor says. “We’re going to decline to comment.”
***
Some NFL observers do more than cringe at coachspeak. When they hear a team’s leader duck behind a gray curtain of mumbo jumbo, they argue that it’s hurting the league by restricting information to those who foot the bill – the fans.
“It might be the most paranoid group of men in any business you can find,” says Pete Prisco, an NFL columnist with CBSSportsline.com who has written about the topic. “They forget that it’s football not CIA trade secrets.
“Besides, are there really any secrets in the NFL anymore? Everybody knows what everybody is doing.”
Former coach Marv Levy agrees. During his 17 years leading the Kansas City Chiefs and the Buffalo Bills, he says he was open with the media – except when one of his players faced legal trouble or a pending cut.
“I got some very good advice once,” says Levy, who retired in 1997. “That was: You’re not talking to a reporter, you’re talking to the public. We didn’t hide things. They are a little more guarded now.”
In Levy’s coaching days and now, both sides understand the informational tug of war: journalists dig, coaches dodge. Most accept it. Because it could be worse. It could be back to the days of Vince Lombardi.
“We end up sort of accepting that is the lesser of evils,” Clough says. “We accept coach-speak, and some level of calculated blandness or charming disingenuousness, in place of hostility. If you go back and read the stuff on Lombardi, he had his version of events and if you ever wrote something that contradicted that, it might be a year or two where he didn’t talk to you.
“I’d prefer what we have to somebody who is literally gritting his teeth anytime he has deign to talk to you. As smarmy as some of these methods can be, that’s preferable to outright hostility.”
***
Parcells was howling again last week.
He said there are times he wants to “kick” members of his defense. He called Keyshawn Johnson “certifiable” and offered his receiver a sarcastic suggestion: “Tell him to get open.”
In case you haven’t noticed, the Cowboys are in first place.
***
Coaches may muddy their words to cloak team secrets. They also sharpen their words when it fits their needs.
Shanahan has twice invited reporters into his film room to explain NFL life frame by frame, once in 2002 to defend safety Kenoy Kennedy’s controversial hits, and once in 2004 to prove that cut blocking goes on around the league and not just in Denver.
Earlier this season in Miami, coach Nick Saban subtly called out two rookies, defensive tackles Kevin Vickerson and Manuel Wright, to spice up their play.
He told reporters: “If I wasn’t asked specifically about (Vickerson and Wright) I wouldn’t have said anything about them, or if they weren’t young guys that we are trying to light a fire (under them) any way that we can. … So, if you’d do me a favor and put that in the paper, maybe that will help out.”
Parcells’ barbs are far more blustery. But there are those in the NFL who believe much of that ferocity is manufactured. Because it carries weight in the locker room. Because it creates respect among players.
“Some coaches who do that are protecting an image they have, an image that they sort of like,” Levy says. “Bill Parcells, maybe he’s one of those. …
“But I’ve done it too,” Levy adds. “After a game is over, your emotions are right there and it’s very easy to say something like, ‘If some of these guys don’t step up, we’re going to have to make some changes.’ I’ve then gone into the locker room and told the guys, ‘I owe you an apology.”‘
It’s why former Dallas coach Tom Landry once counseled, “Right after the game, say as little as possible.”
***
After his Patriots lost to the Broncos last Sunday, Bill Belichick used only 198 words to answer the postgame questions.
If you call Grabow Corporate Entertainment in Dallas and ask about hiring Belichick to speak at your group function, you will be told: “If you don’t have $75,000, you can’t afford him.” You also would hear that Belichick’s speeches on leadership and teamwork are booking fast during the months of March and April.
***
Among many NFL beat writers, Belichick is considered the most cagey of coaches.
Prisco places him on the top branch of what he calls “The Parcells tree.”
“Parcells started this whole thing. Now you’ve got Belichick, (the New York Giants) Tom Coughlin, (Cleveland’s) Romeo Crennel. They’re all a pain to deal with, but they’re all good coaches. That’s what people follow. It’s a league of copycats.”
In other words, their wins have further spread coachspeak.
Under NFL rules, head coaches must meet with the media only once a week – after each game, says league spokesman Greg Aiello. Most sit down with reporters three, four, five times a week. Shanahan held three group briefings last week and in a season “meets the press more than any other official in the state of Colorado,” Broncos spokesman Jim Saccomano says.
“Why wouldn’t the coaches be available to the media? The coach is the spokesman for the team,” Aiello says. “We don’t receive any complaints about head coaches not being available enough.”
But as Prisco says, all those Q&A’s don’t mean a gush of worthwhile information is flowing to the media or, ultimately, to the fans. More and more, he contends, the coaches are churning out loads of double talk.
“It’s definitely getting worse,” Prisco says. “The NFL has to be real careful because this was a league that begged for attention back in the day. That same league is now trying to push it away.”
Staff writer Bill Briggs can be reached at 303-820-1720 or bbriggs@denverpost.com.
