DAN REEVES : Denver’s Coach Was Taught Tricks of the Trade by Landry, but On-the-Job Training Was What Paid Off

DENVER â€”  Dan Reeves was reminded how he once seized the opportunity, an appearance on Monday night football, to make his mark as a head coach in the National Football League.

“That fourth-down gamble?� he asked. “I remember it very well. I did exactly what (Minnesota Coach) Bud Grant needed to have done. The only chance he had was if I’d gamble and lose.�

It was midseason, 1981, and Reeves, the Denver Broncos’ rookie coach, was holding a 19-10 lead. But he ordered his offense to go for the first down, right there on national TV before his startled coaching peers and a nation of critics. The Broncos didn’t make it.

“There I was, saying: ‘Well, if we don’t score we’ll eat up some clock and we’ll still win the game,’ � Reeves said. “But the first play, they run a reverse down to the one-foot line and score in about five seconds.�

Luckily for Reeves, the Broncos hung on and won, 19-17.

Recently Reeves reflected: “It’s great to have confidence that you can make it, but you also have to make decisions that are wise, and that wasn’t a wise decision.�

Bold, maybe, but not wise. Now, if you want just plain dumb, a week earlier the Broncos were playing at Buffalo and leading, 7-6, near the end of the game.

Said Reeves: “Buffalo’s driving down. They’re gonna try to kick a field goal and win, and I didn’t use a timeout. I didn’t give myself enough time that if they do make the field goal, to come back and have a chance to win. They ran it down to about 10 seconds--and we’re sitting there with three timeouts.�

The Bills kicked the field goal and won, 9-7.

Despite those mistakes, the Broncos went into their final game at Chicago with a 10-5 record and a chance for the playoffs. Then Reeves went back to coaching like a rookie again.

“(The Bears) are beating our butts bad (35-24). Fred Silva’s the referee, and our quarterback gets trapped. Our receivers are 40 yards downfield, and he blows the whistle to start the 30-second clock. We had to use a timeout.

“I was screaming: ‘Silva, what the hell are you doin’? You didn’t wait for the receivers to get back!’

“He said: ‘Coach, in the two-minute period (before time expires) when you get trapped, we’re gonna give you five seconds.’

“I didn’t even know the rule. I felt like an idiot.�

Now it’s 1985. Dan Reeves, projected as one of the NFL’s next great coaches, sits in his second-floor office at the Broncos’ practice complex on the outskirts of town and gears up for the opening game against the Rams at Anaheim Stadium Sept. 8.

He is coming off a 13-3 season during which the Broncos beat the Raiders twice and won the AFC West, and after which he was honored as NFL coach of the year by Sports Illustrated and Pro Football Weekly. He radiates control and confidence. What happened?

The four years have been a learning process--on-the-job training--prodded by a rude awakening. After his 10-6 debut, the Broncos collapsed to 2-7 in ‘82, the strike season.

Reeves said: “There’s a doubt in your mind: Can you actually do it? Then to come in my first year and have a winning season and have a chance to win our division, I really felt good about myself. Then I got down to earth real quick the next year. For the first time in 17 years I was on a losing team. Some doubts creep back in: Gosh, what the hell happened?�

Part of Reeves’ problem was that he served his entire coaching apprenticeship in Dallas under Tom Landry, first as a player, then as a player-coach, and for the last three years as offensive coordinator. Landry may be a master, but he was still just one coach doing things one way.

“I’d been in the same system for 16 years,� Reeves said. “I didn’t know any other way. I wish I’d have coached under Shula, Grant, Knox, Noll. But I was in a situation I thought was a good one.

“When I came here I noticed that coaches had different ideas. Every one of our staff had been a whole bunch of places. It was invigorating for me. One thing I’ve learned in four years is there’s a lot of different ways to do things. You’ve gotta be flexible.�

Being a head coach means more than coming up with ingenious game plans.

“The press is a great example,� Reeves said. “There is no way anybody can work as an assistant coach and prepare himself to deal with the press.�

And cutting players: “That’s the toughest part, telling a guy for the first time in his life: ‘You can’t play for us.’ You never had to tell every one of those guys.�

Twelve years ago, Reeves wasn’t even sure he wanted to be a coach all his life. He took a year off to sell real estate.

“I’d been in the league since ‘65, so 48 weeks of my life I’d spent in Thousand Oaks, Calif., (in the Cowboys’ training camp)--almost an entire year of your family life.

“There also were the problems you have in football, like dealing with players. Then all of a sudden I was out and found that you’ve gotta deal with those things regardless of what kind of business you’re in.

“And I missed it. I don’t think anything excites anybody as much as football does. Every week is a different situation, and if you play poorly you have a chance to redeem yourself the very next week.

“When I came back in ’74 and knew coaching was what I wanted to do, I started paying attention, watching Coach Landry and seeing things he did.

“The key thing is you always have to be yourself, and certainly there were some things that Coach Landry did I thought should have been done differently. That’s human nature. But I also thought I was learning under a great coach, and there were a lot of traits he has that I wish I had.

“He had a tremendous amount of patience,� Reeves said. “When you take a guy, for example, like Duane Thomas. I was his position coach, and I’d have gotten rid of Duane if I’d have been the head coach--and we won the Super Bowl (XII) with him. Coach Landry always believed in giving a guy plenty of rope, and he had to hang himself before he’d get rid of him.�

Landry later moved out Thomas, as he did other players he considered expendable, among them wide receiver Butch Johnson and linebacker Thomas (Hollywood) Henderson, who is now in prison.

“Yeah, but how many years?� Reeves said. “Henderson was another guy other coaches felt we should have let go sooner.�

With Reeves, it is almost always “Coach Landry,� not Tom or Landry.

“Coach Landry has an insight into judging talent,� Reeves said. “He (could) look at a player and say: ‘It’s gonna take him a year to be here.’ Or: ‘It’s gonna take us this long to be here.’

But Reeves thought Landry went wrong at the start of last season when he benched quarterback Danny White in favor of Gary Hogeboom, the players’ choice.

“I could see it kind of coming as I was leaving there. I think he was a little bit swayed by the players. Usually, as far as Landry’s concerned, a guy’s job is his until he loses it, and I don’t think Danny White lost it. He gave it to Hogeboom, and it was a mistake.

“But hindsight’s great, too. I can remember when Coach Landry would ask us about a situation and I’d make a suggestion, and then Coach Landry would make a decision. I never knew there was a difference until I was the one that had to make that decision you had to live with. It’s easy to make a suggestion.

“I can now relate better to Coach Landry’s situation. If I’d have been there, I’d have made a suggestion and been on both sides.�

Later last season, Landry went back to White, which showed Reeves something else about Landry.

“He had the ability to change,� Reeves said.

Reeves had made his own quarterback mistake a year earlier, in ‘83, when he rushed rookie John Elway into the starting job, underestimating the adjustments a rookie quarterback faces in the NFL.

“No question that in retrospect, I made a poor decision,� Reeves said. “I’d never dealt with a quarterback who had to play as a rookie. Going through training camp his rookie year and competing with a veteran, they were fairly equal, (and) we knew how far we could go with Steve DeBerg.

“But training camp and preseason aren’t the same as the regular season. All of a sudden the defenses change, and they threw everything they could at him.�

Elway lasted five games.

“It hurt his confidence,� Reeves said. “He just wasn’t ready from the knowledge standpoint. Everything was from memory. It’s like you were learning Spanish, and you could do the tests and everything in the classroom, but if you had to go to Mexico and speak it, you couldn’t.

“He was trying to talk a foreign language in the huddle and tell everybody what to do, and when he came up to the line of scrimmage he’d look at the clock and the clock’s running down ‘10, 9, 8 . . . and I’ve gotta get this play off,’ and he never had a chance to look across the line of scrimmage to see where anybody was.

“It wasn’t all bad because he did learn that he had a long way to go. And when Steve did go down in Seattle, John was much better.

“The big thing is that John had been a great quarterback at Stanford, but in the last two years John has learned how to win. I’m not sure that’s something he knew.�

Some coaches can function successfully by being aloof from their players. Landry is one. Then there are the so-called players’ coaches, who like to develop a we’re-all-in-this-together atmosphere.

Reeves thought he was among the players’ coaches until he experienced a charisma crisis in training camp last year.

Charisma he did not learn from Landry. The veteran Louis Wright was delegated to take the players’ message to Reeves, who was perceived as uncaring and unapproachable.

Reeves later told T.J. Simers of the Rocky Mountain News: “I felt like I had great rapport with the players, but after talking with Louis, I realized I didn’t. No one felt comfortable about coming to talk to me.

“Now, I will listen. That meeting is probably the single most important thing which happened to this team. It certainly got my attention.�

Defensive back Dennis Smith said: “He’s looser now, and it shows in our success.�

Butch Johnson said Reeves certainly is looser than Landry ever was. Before the ’84 season Landry, weary of Johnson’s uninhibited behavior, dealt him off to Houston, where he was miserable. Then, near the end of training camp, Reeves traded for him.

“I knew what kind of team player he was,� Reeves said. “Here’s a guy that would do everything you asked of him, had great preseasons every year--probably better preseasons than a (Drew) Pearson or a (Tony) Hill sometimes--and he’d always sit on the bench.

“But yet, whether it would be third down or when a guy got hurt, he’d perform. I didn’t think he was a hotdog. A lot of that was brought on by the press. He’s a showman.�

Johnson said Reeves isn’t quite the same as when he was a position coach at Dallas.

“He naturally changed by going to a head coach,� Johnson said. “It’s not as easy to be as close to people as you used to be when you’re concentrating so hard on other things.�

The things that bugged Landry don’t seem to bother Reeves.

“He doesn’t worry about it as long as it doesn’t cause the club a penalty,� Johnson said.

Reeves, 41, was only 37 when the Broncos hired him. At that age, he tended to be impatient and impulsive.

“You say things you regret, and it’s so easy to be negative,� he said. “I was young and inexperienced and I would holler and say things I wished I could take back. I learned patience from dealing with John Elway. I was his worst enemy.�

According to Landry, every coach goes through that. “When you come out of an assistant’s role, you have very little feel about what it means to handle the overall picture,� he said.

Said Reeves: “But I still can’t stand mental mistakes.�

Honest, physical errors are forgivable. Sometimes. Placekicker Rich Karlis, who hit the goal posts on crucial kicks two weeks in a row late last season, will testify to that.

“He never got down on me,� Karlis said. “He was always my No. 1 supporter.�

Karlis would hop over hot coals on his bare right foot for Reeves. In ‘81, Reeves dumped Fred Steinfort, All-Pro two years earlier, to sign Karlis, a rookie free agent.

“People thought he was crazy,� Karlis said. “I don’t want to let him down, because he stuck his neck out for me.�

Reeves does not see himself as a motivator.

“I don’t like to have an up and down team that has to rely on me to make a great talk to get fired up,� he said.

But he is intensely competitive. “Anything you keep score at, I’m competitive,� he said.

Once, he figured he had been suckered in a parlor bet when somebody caught a golf ball several times on the back of his hand. Reeves went home and spent hours mastering the trick.

At the spring’s AFC West coaches’ media gathering, he surprised reporters and rivals alike with his ability to blow a coin off the edge of a table into a pitcher of beer. First, though, he set up his audience in the manner of a carnival shark, pretending that the trick was more difficult than it really was to get the ante up.

Fiercely competitive. Highly methodical. Sometimes a team will assume the personality of its coach.

“I don’t even know what my personality is,� Reeves said.

Some clues: His office overlooks the practice field through sliding glass doors leading onto a balcony. He has a few small plaques for community service on one wall. The two other walls are blank. There is a rubber plant at one corner of his desk and a few copies of Forbes magazine by a visitor’s chair.

There are no trophies or proclamations, and the sport of football is not apparent, except for a projector and small screen in one corner. Otherwise, the office could belong to a real estate salesman.

Actually, it belongs to the vice president of a football company. Owner Patrick Bowlen gave his coach the added title last February because, he said at the time: “I want Dan to know what goes on across the street.�

Reeves said: “I know more what players are making since I’ve become a vice president. I wish I was playing now. I’d like to learn as much about the business part of it as I can. I think it’s gonna make me a better head coach.�

He gets involved in player negotiations but treads lightly.

“I don’t get involved so much in the numbers part as I try to keep our people moving . . . making sure that according to how good a player is and how important he is to us that we’re being fair with him, compared to what our players are making, what other teams’ players are making.

“One of the worst things we had when I came here was the salary structure. It made no sense. We’ve tried to pay our people according to their contributions. I can’t go to a guy and say: ‘You’re not worth that,’ and then go to him on Sunday afternoon and say: ‘You’re a hell of a player.’ �

As a vice president, Reeves might be expected to have more security than the average coach.

“Well, I don’t know,� he said. “I think it still boils down to how many games you win. They can fire you as a vice president and a head coach.�

The citizens of Denver have bought out Mile High Stadium’s 75,100 seats for every Bronco game since 1970.

“This town is happy when you win and, gosh, you go downtown the week after a loss and people are mopin’ around, really affected by it,� Reeves said.

But outside of Colorado, the Broncos don’t seem to cut much of a figure. “Last year, 13 and 3, win the AFC West and we got one guy (running back Sammy Winder) in the Pro Bowl,� Reeves said.

The Raiders, whom they beat twice, had eight, elected by their peers.

“That hurt a lot of our players,� Reeves said. “But I told them: ‘If we continue to win, the recognition will come.’ �

Reeves has no trouble being recognized around Denver.

“It’s great to be recognized and have people pat you on the back, but I’ve been in the game long enough to know that’s a game-by-game situation,� he said. “It’s also nice to be able to go out and not have anybody know who the heck you are. I can’t go anywhere.�

Reeves’ wife, Pam, has consistently declined interviews and TV appearances so that she won’t be recognized in public. Their three children, in fact, have had more exposure. They don’t think it’s all that hot, either, according to Reeves. “They don’t want to get any special treatment from anybody,� he said. “And at the same time, (they don’t want to) be blamed because daddy’s calling stupid plays or gambling on fourth down.�