Anyone who has ever covered an NFL game or watched one in a crowded area of luxury suites and boxes knows that the post-event elevator is a fickle creature.
Sometimes, the elevator comes right away and you are whisked to your destination. Sometimes, it gets tangled in a complex web of VIP floors, staff concession floors and other service stops.
And sometimes, after your team blows a 25-point lead to lose the Super Bowl, it is at least 15 minutes behind schedule and it is suggested you take the stairs with some very pumped-up Patriots fans.
From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
*After the game, several Falcons assistant coaches, including (offensive coordinator Kyle) Shanahan, waited for the elevator to go downstairs. It never came. So they were told to walk down a flight. They waded through celebrating Patriots fans who hooted and hollered, many stunned to see members of one of the team's coaching staffs walking outside the beer and hotdog stands. *
The coaches were told to come back, an elevator would stop at that lower level to get him. So they circled back and waited. Ten minutes. Fifteen minutes. Twenty minutes.
People can read this anecdote and try and compare it to their jobs, but this might stand alone as a workplace low. Shanahan, who is (ridiculously) receiving a healthy amount of blame after calling a pass on a third-and-1 which could have put the game away but instead resulted in a sack fumble of Matt Ryan and a Patriots possession to put them down just eight points, probably wants to sit in a dark room for the next hour and speak to no one.
Instead, the fast track to his bus ride home is blocked and he must weave through a traffic jam of football fans from Natick, Massachusetts with recently purchased Sons of Belichick t-shirts on.
Talk about worst nightmares. At least Shanahan is on a plane to San Francisco soon.
