By Mark Maske
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 18, 2001; Page D1

When the Washington Redskins take the field today at Invesco Field at Mile High, the Denver Broncos will be standing between them and a fourth straight victory, a win that would move them a step closer to reassembling a season that once seemed beyond repair.

For Redskins Coach Marty Schottenheimer, the Broncos are a familiar obstacle. Schottenheimer has a career record of 8-16 against Denver, and some of the losses have qualified as his biggest coaching disappointments.

In 1998, Schottenheimer's Kansas City Chiefs looked uncharacteristically undisciplined in a lopsided Monday night defeat to the Broncos. The Chiefs finished 7-9 – the only losing season of Schottenheimer's NFL coaching career – and Schottenheimer resigned following the season, beginning a two-year sabbatical that ended when he was hired in January by Redskins owner Daniel Snyder.

But that loss seems relatively palatable when compared to the consecutive AFC championship game defeats that Schottenheimer's Cleveland Browns suffered to the Broncos to end their 1986 and '87 seasons an agonizing step shy of the Super Bowl. The games are so memorable that they are recalled merely by mentioning The Drive and The Fumble. Denver quarterback John Elway led the Broncos virtually the length of the field for a tying touchdown that produced an overtime victory in the first game, and Browns running back Earnest Byner fumbled on his way to a would-be tying touchdown in the second contest.

"Those two games are torture," former Browns general manager Ernie Accorsi, now the GM of the New York Giants, said last week. "There are games that coaches and general managers take to their graves, and those are two of them. . . . I love Marty to death. But if he tells you they haven't stuck with him, he's not telling you the truth. We're never together for too long before it comes up."

Schottenheimer is 4-8 against the Miami Dolphins, and is not more than two games under .500 against any other team. But he insists he doesn't have thoughts of payback for the Broncos.

"I really don't," Schottenheimer said last week. "They're totally unrelated to the situation at hand. We work hard to try to eliminate things that are out of our control – distractions, if you will. To do that, you're taking away the focus from what needs to be the focus, and that's the game about to be played."

But at other times, Schottenheimer has acknowledged how much the '98 game has continued to bother him. The Broncos' 30-7 win in Kansas City on Nov. 16, 1998, gave the Chiefs a six-game losing streak. The Chiefs committed three flagrant personal foul penalties, two by late linebacker Derrick Thomas for yanking the facemask of then-Broncos tight end Shannon Sharpe. Schottenheimer has called it the low point of his career. In an interview during training camp this year, recalling the game brought tears to Schottenheimer's eyes.

"That was hard," he said then. "That shouldn't have happened. It happened on my watch, and it bothers me to this day. There's a background to it which I can't go into, but my football teams didn't play that way. They didn't do that, and it infuriated me and it humiliated me."

Schottenheimer has taken his teams to the playoffs in 11 of 14 full seasons as an NFL head coach, but the glaring void on his re»sume» is the lack of a Super Bowl appearance. Elway and the Broncos played a major role in that.

"Being denied an opportunity to play in the Super Bowl, that's the hurt, especially in the first game because we had the lead," said former Browns tight end Ozzie Newsome, the Baltimore Ravens' vice president of player personnel. "You move on, but that's part of the emptiness in that part of my life. I felt a part of what we did last year, but it would be a different feeling to have played in a Super Bowl."

According to Accorsi, Elway once told Schottenheimer at the Pro Bowl that the Broncos probably wouldn't have scored the tying touchdown at blustery Cleveland Stadium on Jan. 11, 1987, if they'd had 70 yards to go. But because they had 98 yards to go, Elway told Schottenheimer, the Broncos felt no pressure. There was almost no hope. The game essentially was lost.

Elway, though, capped the 15-play drive with a five-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Mark Jackson with 37 seconds remaining in regulation, and Rich Karlis's 33-yard field goal just under six minutes into overtime gave Denver a 23-20 triumph.

Schottenheimer has what he calls his Midnight Rule: A win can be savored or a loss can be bemoaned until midnight, then it's on to the next game or the next task beginning the following day. But even now, when he wants to, Schottenheimer can recreate The Drive, right down to the tiniest detail.

It's all about the details to Schottenheimer. When he talks about The Fumble, he doesn't talk about what Byner did. He talks about what a Cleveland wide receiver – presumably Webster Slaughter – failed to do, stopping to watch Byner's run instead of completing his pattern, as prescribed, to the corner of the end zone to take Broncos defensive back Jeremiah Castille out of the play. It was Castille who stripped the ball from Byner and recovered the fumble at Denver's 3-yard line with just over a minute left to preserve the Broncos' 38-31 lead in what became, after a meaningless safety, a 38-33 win at Mile High Stadium on Jan. 17, 1988.

When Schottenheimer is asked these days about which of his former players best embodies what he stands for as a coach, he does not hesitate. He says Byner, who squeezed everything he had out of his limited physical skills. Accorsi said he recalls returning to Cleveland from Denver the night of the game and being greeted by fans, one of whom held a sign that read: "Byner – No Apologies Necessary."

When Redskins tailback Stephen Davis's fumble cost the Redskins a win at Dallas on Oct. 15, dropping their record to 0-5, Schottenheimer's postgame speech in the locker room borrowed from what he had said to his Browns players following the second championship game loss. He told Davis, as he had told Byner, to hold his head high because he was the reason his team had a chance to win in the first place.

"He displayed emotions," Newsome said of Schottenheimer. "But after a loss like that, he could say all the right things."

Said Accorsi: "I remember walking over to Marty in the locker room after the game in Denver and hugging him. We were both crying. We couldn't get words out . . . wonder if you'll ever get back."

Today's game probably will not be remembered for years. It's a 3-5 Redskins team facing a Broncos club that began the season with Super Bowl aspirations but has struggled to a 5-4 record. The Broncos are without injured tailback Terrell Davis and are woefully short of manpower at wide receiver.

But if Schottenheimer and the Redskins are going to continue to turn around their season, they probably need to win today or next Sunday at Philadelphia. Two losses would leave them with a 3-7 record and facing a steep uphill climb. The Redskins are 0-4 on the road this season.

"The next step is to beat a good team on the road," Redskins left guard Dave Szott said. "That would be a barometer of where we are."