[A.A. Cunningham]

I quit being a fan of his when he and Shanahan engineered the firing of Dan Reeves.

Elway and Shanahan, who was then a coach with the 49ers, convinced Bowlen to fire Reeves? If they had that much juice why weren't they then able to convince Bowlen to hire Shanahan instead of that disaster Wade Phillips?

[Tupelo]

Shanahan was the offensive coordinator at the time. He and Elway changed the plays that the Reeves the head coach had approved for the games. They were running plays out of sequence.
As for Phillips, You might think he was a disaster, but I do not. IMO he would have had a much better record in Denver if he had had a quarterback that wanted to play for him. Reeves, Phillips, Tebow, and Bill McCartney, four fine moral men chased out of Denver. In McCartney's case Boulder. Not because they were losers. Denver does not like moral men, they prefer the Gangsta types. That is just a fact of life anymore.