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DENVER, CO (August 12, 2010) – It’s been just more than a decade since Steve Atwater launched himself into an NFL ball carrier. He’s raised his kids, run a business and gone about his life after football. Until . . .

“My kids are growing up — we just got one off to Georgetown — and my wife, she looked at me and said, ‘You know, you need to get out of the house,’ ” Atwater said, laughing heartily. “Football has been such a big part of my life and the time was right to try this to see what it would bring. I’ve had a great time.”

A great time in Mike Shanahan’s first training camp as head coach of the Washington Redskins, a training camp that has been wrapped in a little orange and blue heritage.

Atwater, Terrell Davis, Steve Beuerlein and Michael Pittman — former Broncos all — are interns on Shanahan’s coaching staff this summer. They have taken an entry-level, kick-the-tires, short-term job to see what coaching in the NFL is all about.

Davis and Pittman have been working with former Broncos running backs coach Bobby Turner, now a Redskins assistant. Beuerlein has worked with Shanahan and his son, Kyle, who is the Redskins’ offensive coordinator. Atwater said he has spent most of his time with Redskins secondary coach Bob Slowik and assistant secondary coach Steve Jackson. Slowik also is a former Broncos assistant.

“This is something that’s been in the back of my mind and Mike knows that,” said Beuerlein, who also is an NFL analyst on CBS broadcasts. “Depending on what happens with the broadcasting the next year or two, this is something I could pursue down the road. Mike invited me to come down, told me to spend a couple of weeks with us and see if you get the fever.”

Davis, one of the most decorated players in Broncos history, having won the league’s MVP award and been named the Super Bowl MVP, began the journey just more than a year ago.

Shanahan didn’t coach in 2009 after being fired by the Broncos, but he spent much of the year working out of a Centennial office building with Slowik, planning for his return to the NFL. Davis met Shanahan at his house to talk about the future.

“Basically I said at some point, I might look at coaching, just as part of a long discussion we had about a lot of things,” Davis said. “Then in the spring he called me to see if I would be interested in giving it a try, to do an internship to see what I thought, or how it would go.”

Said Atwater: “I played for Mike and I always knew he was extremely organized, but to sit in on the staff meetings and evaluations, it really opened my eyes up to the amount of detail. You always know Mike wants to win, but to see the organization, all of the moving pieces, basically to see how many people and how much effort it takes to build a well-oiled machine, has been something to see.”

Beuerlein said Shanahan bringing in so many of his former players as interns on the Washington coaching staff was part of the process of changing the culture at Redskins head-quarters during Shanahan’s first season as the team’s head coach.

All involved said the time spent in staff meetings has been a new frontier for them, that the interaction between players and coaches on the field is something they are familiar with and something they believed was their strong suit.

But when the newcomers’ time on the field is done — even the time spent meeting as a team or in position groups — that is when the curtain is pulled back.

“I never sat in on those meetings, obviously, as a player,” Atwater said. “And I knew how coaches handled their responsibilities, but to watch Mike and the other coaches evaluate the players, that was a whole other side of it.”

“(Shanahan) sets standards and he’s very strong in his convictions,” Beuerlein said. “Guys like Terrell and Steve, who know for a fact they want to get into coaching, what a great springboard into it right here, having this unique opportunity.”

By Jeff Legwold, The Denver Post