When Mike Shanahan came to coach Washington’s NFL franchise a dozen years ago — it really has been that long, hasn’t it? — his objective was clear: rebuild a consistent winner that would enjoy the kind of success he had in Denver, and thereby enhance his legacy. That ended the way it always ends in the knows-no-bottom era of Daniel Snyder’s Washington ownership.
But now, with the benefit of perspective, the lasting legacy of Shanahan’s four-year stint here is not the 24-40 record, the blaze to the playoffs in Robert Griffin III’s rookie year or the controversy thereafter. Rather, it’s the coaches he hired and developed, because as the NFL playoffs opened this weekend, they have an outsize impact on the entire league.
When Shanahan was hired in January 2010, his son, Kyle, became his 30-year-old offensive coordinator; on Sunday afternoon, Kyle will lead his San Francisco 49ers against the Dallas Cowboys in hopes of returning to the Super Bowl for the second time in three seasons. Upon arrival in Washington, Kyle endorsed one of his former colleagues in Houston for the job of quarterbacks coach: 30-year-old Matt LaFleur. LaFleur awaits the outcomes of this opening playoff weekend to see whom his Green Bay Packers will face as they seek a third appearance in the NFC championship game in LaFleur’s three seasons as coach.
And back those dozen years ago, if anyone noticed the hiring of a 23-year-old offensive assistant whose previous season was spent as the wide receivers coach of the United Football League’s Florida Tuskers — well, you were paying more attention than I was, and I was on the Washington beat. On Monday night, that lowest-rung assistant, Sean McVay, will lead his Los Angeles Rams into the playoffs for the fourth time in his five seasons as coach.
This isn’t breaking news, and the idea that Washington allowed head coaching candidates who proved successful elsewhere to slip through its fingers is re-engineering the circumstances at the time. Man, though, it’s hard to steer the mind away from thoughts like this: In 13 combined seasons, Kyle Shanahan, McVay and LaFleur have a .630 winning percentage with nine playoff berths. In Washington’s past 13 seasons, it has a .385 winning percentage and three playoff appearances.
This isn’t about Washington, though. It’s about Shanahan’s ability to identify coaching talent and teach it to flourish.
“What I looked for in assistant coaches — or people in general, but particularly assistant coaches — is people who you could tell, first thing, that they were very passionate about what they were doing,” Shanahan, 69, said by phone Friday. “You can tell that very quickly. You want people who would actually work for free because they loved it so much. I felt like I was that way. And those guys, all of them, you could tell that early on.”
None of this trio is the product of just one coach, of course. Indeed, Shanahan is a huge believer that he learned not only from working under George Seifert with the 49ers and Dan Reeves with the Broncos, but from Darrell Mudra at Eastern Illinois and Barry Switzer at Oklahoma, where Shanahan entered the profession in 1975, “didn’t make a penny” and slept in the dorms.
“Every place you’re at, you learn something from,” he said.
In 2010, that’s what he preached to his young charges. He had intimate knowledge of Kyle’s career, of course, because he had watched his son go over tape of Jerry Rice and John Taylor running routes when Kyle was a high school wide receiver. By the time he reached college at Duke and then transferred to Texas, Kyle “knew the position of wide receiver probably better than I did,” Mike said.
“The thing I said to Kyle is: ‘You’ve got to make sure that you know your position inside and out. The great coaches, they know everything about their position, and they’re constantly trying to learn it.’ ”
Shanahan preached that gospel to his son as Kyle began his career with Tampa Bay and developed into an offensive coordinator in Houston, and he continued to thump that bible to his young assistants in Washington. What he found was a group that showed up at the Ashburn facility to work out at 5 a.m. and begin the workday after a quick shower — not to mention the trio that flipped off the lights after everyone else had gone home. When Washington’s tight ends coach left after the 2010 season, Shanahan planned to contact four established coaches to fill the position, but he sat down with McVay first.
“I canceled all my other interviews because he was the guy,” Shanahan said. “They had that passion. One thing I found out is: If you’re not passionate, usually you don’t work very hard. If you are passionate, then working hard is easier.”
In Kyle, McVay and LaFleur, Shanahan had a receptive audience, so he continued to reinforce how to develop. Once you’ve mastered your own position, learn the responsibilities of every other position on your side of the ball — in their case, offense. If you think you have that down, start asking the defensive coaches why they run a blitz a certain way or how they’re disguising a coverage.
“If you’re going to become a head coach,” Shanahan said, “you have to be able to know all of the positions, because you have to know who on your staff is a good coach and who might not be. We would talk about that together: ‘You guys want to be a coordinator, a head coach? Let’s go through what it takes.’ ”
Shanahan became a coaching factory. Three of his assistants from his pre-Washington days — Art Shell, Gary Kubiak and Anthony Lynn — went on to be NFL head coaches. Eight of his former assistants ended up as head coaches in college.
So if he doesn’t travel to Texas to watch Kyle’s 49ers in person — he was still weighing the practicalities given coronavirus restrictions, even as he was going over tape of the Cowboys — Mike Shanahan will watch with interest from home in Denver. Not just his son, but McVay on Monday night and LaFleur next week.
“It’s very prideful for me to watch them go on and do what they’re doing,” he said.
It’s why Mike Shanahan’s Washington tenure should be remembered for something other than the Donovan McNabb trade or the RGIII debacle. It should be remembered as the incubator that — a decade on — helped grow three of the NFL’s most stable and successful coaches.
