The Broncos could fret about the team secrets Josh McDaniels can now share with the enemy. Or they can be pleased their former coach is now working for the New England Patriots, Saturday’s second-round playoff opponent.

McDaniels has become the NFL version of the cooler.

On McDaniels’ first day as head coach of the Broncos in 2009, the Pro Bowl quarterback he inherited, Jay Cutler, said he wanted to be traded.

Not two years later, after his good friend Steve Scarnecchia was caught turning on his video camera when he wasn’t supposed to and the Broncos had suffered through a stretch of 17 losses in 22 games, McDaniels was fired. He got a plum offensive coordinator position with the promising St. Louis Rams and their up-and-coming quarterback Sam Bradford. In one year, McDaniels led the Rams’ offense to the NFL gutter, averaging an embarrassing league-low 12.1 points per game, and he was released from his contract.

McDaniels even got dumped by Bob LaMonte, the agent who kept getting him all these prestigious coaching gigs.

The way McDaniels’ luck is going, if he were walking down one side of the street, it would be safer to scurry through traffic and blaring horns to get to the other side.

“I think he can help us in a lot of different ways,” Bill Belichick, the scheming New England coach, said at his news conference Monday.

Once again, Belichick has found a loophole in the rulebook by hiring McDaniels as an offensive assistant coach the week before the Patriots play McDaniels’ former team. And the NFL has plugged its ears and covered its eyes to a move that would seem to at least violate the spirit of fair competition.

“Teams in the playoffs can sign players,” said Greg Aiello, spokesman for the NFL commissioner’s office by way of explanation.

Yes, but playoff teams can’t sign players from other teams. And a case can be made that in regard to the 2011 season, McDaniels’ job should be finished.

There is nothing wrong with the Pats rehiring McDaniels, who worked under Belichick from 2001-08. When Mike Shanahan was fired as the Raiders’ head coach four games into the 1989 season, he rejoined the Broncos as an offensive assistant coach later that same season. What makes McDaniels’ case unique is he just completed his 2011 season with the Rams. The season carries on only for playoff teams. And yet McDaniels is able to join the Patriots in time to help them gain a competitive advantage not only against the Broncos, whom he knows well, but five other playoff teams — New York, Green Bay, New Orleans, San Francisco and Baltimore — whom his Rams played this season.

“I didn’t know that would be legal,” said Broncos defensive end Robert Ayers, who was a first-round pick in McDaniels’ first draft class of 2009. “But we’re not going to worry about that.”

People around Denver and St. Louis might not think much of McDaniels’ coaching ability. But as a scout/talent evaluator he was smart enough to make first-round picks in 2010 of Tim Tebow and Demaryius Thomas, the heroes in the Broncos’ 29-23 overtime playoff victory Sunday over Pittsburgh.

“Josh wasn’t the only guy who drafted them,” said Broncos coach John Fox, who was hired a year ago to replace McDaniels. “A lot of people were involved in drafting those guys. Just like ‘I’ didn’t draft Von Miller. ‘We’ drafted him.

“Hey, we say this all the time: It’s not about the coaches. It’s about players making plays.”

In other words, the Broncos are more concerned about trying to defend Tom Brady, Aaron Hernandez, Rob Gronkowski and Wes Welker than they are about tips McDaniels might have about stopping Tebow.

What does McDaniels know about stopping Tebow anyway? When McDaniels was the coach here, he didn’t know enough about Tebow to play him.

Mike Klis: 303-954-1055 or mklis@denverpost.com

