Steve Atwater felt so confident when preparing for Super Bowl XXXII that the former Broncos safety told his position coach late in the week, “We’ve seen enough film. We’ve got it. It’s all in the can, man.”
Ed Donatell agreed. He turned off the tape of the Packers and turned up the Denver focus. It’s a microcosm of player-coach trust that propelled the Broncos to their first Lombardi Trophy soon after.
“Everything played out on the field like we had studied,” Atwater said. “It happened just like that.”
Twenty years after the Broncos’ back-to-back championships, the man once in charge of their vaunted secondary has returned.