ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
The National Football League playoffs begin tomorrow, but this week's news was dominated by teams whose seasons have already ended. Four clubs fired their head coaches, none more shockingly than the Denver Broncos. Our own Stefan Fatsis is very familiar with that team; he spent a summer with the Broncos as a placekicker, kind of a gentleman placekicker, for his latest book. And Stefan, Mike Shanahan, the coach, had the second longest tenure of any coach in the NFL - 14 seasons - which alone makes this firing noteworthy.
STEFAN FATSIS: Oh, absolutely, and much more than the other firings this week - Eric Mangini of the New York Jets, Rod Marinelli of the Detroit Lions, Romeo Crennel of the Cleveland Browns - three, three and four seasons respectively with those teams. Shanahan was with Denver for 21 seasons overall, including seven as an assistant coach. He won two Super Bowls, as many as Tom Landry or Don Shula or Bill Parcells. And he won more than 60 percent of his games in Denver. That's impressive.
SIEGEL: But this year and the previous two seasons haven't been so successful for Denver.
FATSIS: No, 24 and 24, 500 record since 2006, which was the summer I spent with the team, so maybe I'm to blame.
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FATSIS: And they lost the last three games of this season to blow what looked like a sure playoff berth. They've only got one playoff win since that last Super Bowl victory a decade ago. Still, Shanahan is an institution in Denver. He's identified with this franchise in a way that only a few coaches historically become attached to a team. You think of Vince Lombardi in Green Bay, Don Shula with Miami, Hank Stram with Kansas City, Bill Walsh with San Francisco. Shanahan was that influential on how this franchise operated.
SIEGEL: Well, you got to know him when you were writing the book. What's he like?
FATSIS: He's a workaholic, very serious, controlling. He dictated everything in Denver, from who gets off the team plane first - the players - to where fans stand while watching practice in the summer, to which free agents to sign. He's efficient, meticulous, not a screamer. His favorite phrase imitated by the players is, you have to do the little things right - a little bit of cliche in him.
But he's also got a better sense of humor than you might guess watching him on TV, where he's got those big bug eyes and looks very intense. Still, he wasn't someone open to criticism or even to suggestions, and that fostered a culture of paranoia, I think, inside the team. But he had this enormous power that he was granted by the club's owner, Pat Bowlen, because they had this mutual respect and friendship. Bowlen once told me that their relationship was like a marriage, and in today's instant-results sports culture, that is a rare, rare thing.
SIEGEL: So, he was an institution with great control, and he had a very good close relationship with the owner. Why was he fired?
FATSIS: Well, you know, a year ago, people were calling for his head, and Bowlen told me that the noise was irrelevant. Bowlen understood that teams have poor seasons. It's incredibly hard to win in the NFL. What matters is having this foundation for success, which the Broncos did have. Which is why I don't think this was about wins and losses, and that's what makes it different and, I think, interesting. Bowlen, I think, may simply have decided that the long-term health of his business would be best served by a significant change. Maybe the team had stagnated in the public eye, and maybe he needed to do something to energize the fan base. You create this uncertainty among players and staff and the community, but it does get fans talking, gets them paying more attention to the team, maybe it gets them caring again after these three lousy seasons. Bowlen, I think, is thinking about starting a new era in Denver.
SIEGEL: And would you assume that Shanahan could turn up coaching another NFL team?
FATSIS: I think he'll have a job within two or three weeks. He's only 56 years old. We mentioned those three vacancies, and there will be no doubt others coming in the next few weeks, maybe one created even just for Mike Shanahan.
SIEGEL: I've left you hardly any time to talk about the playoff games this week, and four of them - what's the best matchup you're looking forward to?
FATSIS: I like the rookie quarterbacks this weekend: Matt Ryan of Atlanta, Joe Flacco of Baltimore, the Miami Dolphins under Bill Parcells, great revival. And let's not forget Payton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts; they look pretty good. They won the last nine games of the regular season, and Manning today won his third NFL Most Valuable Player award.
SIEGEL: Thank you, Stefan.
FATSIS: Thanks, Robert.
SIEGEL: Stefan Fatsis, the author of "A Few Seconds of Panic: A Five-Foot-Eight, 170-Pound, 43-Year-Old Sportswriter Plays in the NFL." He joins us most Fridays.
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