Shanahan set to match wits with Belichick

DENVER - Mike Shanahan takes no offense to the notion that Bill Belichick has surpassed him as the NFL's best coach.

In fact, Shanahan says, he kind of saw it coming.

The Denver coach, one of the few who has a winning record against Belichick since he started with New England, has a chance to climb back on top - or at least closer to the top - when they meet in the playoffs Saturday night.

Win or lose, Shanahan says being lumped in or around the same category as the coach who has won three Super Bowls in the past four years could never be considered a bad thing.

"When I first got here, someone asked me to rank who the top coaches were," said Shanahan, in his 11th season with the Broncos. "I gave them three guys - Bill Cowher, Jeff Fisher and Bill Belichick. At the time, they laughed at me. But I said, 'Hey, I've watched the guy coach,' and all they could do was talk about his Cleveland escapades."

Those Cleveland escapades are long behind him, and now Belichick is going for history. He's trying to become the first coach to win three consecutive Super Bowls.

Shanahan, meanwhile, is seeking his third Super Bowl title overall.

The second came in 1998 and at that time, Shanahan was known around Denver as The Mastermind - a master of creating matchups, the best coach in the game, the first coach to create a mini-dynasty under the full restrictions of the salary cap (although it was later revealed the Broncos broke a few of those rules during their Super Bowl years).

"He does a great job from week to week of matching up his players against your defensive weaknesses," Belichick said. "And he also adds little, different wrinkles to it."

Indeed, part of Shanahan's brilliance is his ability to devise and use similar plays and formations with different personnel groupings.

"They try to get the defense to declare," Belichick said. "They overload formations. They balance you up. They have a very good, diversified attack."

Part of making it work is picking the right players.

Of course, since Shanahan has final say on all personnel decisions, he gets all the credit when things work out, and that much more blame when they don't.

"He takes everything personally," said defensive lineman Gerard Warren, one of the several risky personnel moves Shanahan made last off-season. "You feel the obligation when you work with him. ... Everybody has to accept their roles and responsibilities. He does. That's the biggest thing he stresses."

A bit has been made this week of the fact that Shanahan is 3-1 against Belichick since 2001, the year of New England's first Super Bowl win. It's the best record against Belichick of all the coaches who have faced him at least four times in that span.

But to use his foot up on Belichick as a source of confidence, or point to it as anything to brag about - it's something Shanahan won't do.

"I don't care if (Belichick's players) are rookies or veterans," Shanahan said. "They are very well coached and they play at a very high level."