SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Nearly three decades later, Mike Shanahan could’ve sat here in the bowels of Levi’s Stadium and still rattled off the names of every single member of his 1997-98 Denver Broncos.
He remembers them. All of them. How they moved. How they practiced. A twinkle lights his eyes as he thinks of those years, his legs crossed on a couch along the wall of an atrium in what’s now his son’s kingdom. The 72-year-old Shanahan deflects any talk of the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s snubbery with an aw-shucks grin. If such an honor ever happened, he says, it’d simply be a nod to that “special group of men” he’ll always remember.