CHARGER ’86 PREVIEW : Smiling, at Last : Don Coryell Still Conceals More Than He Reveals, but Coach Is Happy Despite His New, Limited Place in Charger Hierachy

He is the only coach who has won 100 games in both college and pro football and has never cracked a smile while pacing the sidelines.

He almost never criticizes his players--unusual in the age of Buddy Ryan tough talk--but he frequently forgets their names, which is no greater sin than referring to them by number, as Ryan does.

Entering what may be his final season as a coach, he has a most unusual relationship with his team’s owner. Both concede they rarely speak. Much of the coaching overhead--and pressure--has been transferred to an assistant head coach.

Don Coryell of the San Diego Chargers is among the most misunderstood coaches in pro football, which is partly his fault because he conceals far more than he reveals.

His public image (the passing genius with the vacuum where a defense ought to be) ignores what may be his greatest virtue--his humanity.

Dan Fouts puts him in the company of Knute Rockne and Vince Lombardi. John Madden puts him right up there with Al Davis.

“His contribution to the game of football hasn’t begun to be fully appreciated,” Fouts said.

Madden agrees wholeheartedly.

“I tell people he’s one of the top coaches in all of football and they say, ‘Nah--you’re kidding,’ ” Madden said. “I am not kidding. Along with Al, he’s one of the two biggest people in my football life. He may be the most sincere coach I ever met.

“So many times in sports we all use each other. An owner uses a coach, then fires him. A coach uses a player, then releases him. What I learned from my association with Don is to treat people well all the time, and that’s a helluva lesson. He doesn’t get the respect he deserves, and never has.”

Madden was Coryell’s defensive coordinator at San Diego State two decades ago before moving on to fame with the Raiders and later in TV.

Tom Bass, who was Coryell’s defensive coordinator at San Diego State before Madden, has known and served Coryell as long as anyone in the business.

“Don has never clamored for publicity, and he hasn’t received it, which I think is real sad,” Bass said. “Don is such a feeling person, and he’s taken a lot of crap over the years.”

Bass was fired last season as the Chargers’ defensive coordinator by owner Alex Spanos. Coryell had to break the news to Bass, and there were tears as he spoke.

“It was a very emotional moment, but it didn’t hurt my relationship with Don one bit,” Bass said.

Coryell seems less concerned with his place in history than with his relationships with people. But only up to a point. He is willing to endure a strange, and what may seem a demeaning relationship with Spanos in order to have another shot at the playoffs.

“It’s the only shot he’s got,” an associate said.

Coryell may not be shooting for immortality, but he is interested in matching the accomplishments of Hulda Crooks, the 90-year-old woman who recently made a valiant attempt to scale Mt. Whitney. He has 28 years to get in shape for that endeavor.

A man with flaws both humorous and infuriating, Coryell hears his share of put-downs.

He has created a cottage industry in San Diego for mimics in the electronic media. One radio talk show wit puts him in a class with Jimmy Carter and Henry Kissinger as a broad, enduring target for good-natured abuse.

To many observers, it’s difficult to tell which he needs more, a stronger antacid or a stronger defense.

His admirers tend to make fun of his lisp and his numbing preoccupation with football, which has produced moments of low comedy:

--He has been known to send his team onto the field quacking like mad ducks. Hence, the nickname, “The Duck.”

--Once, in front of a crowd of 50,000, he wore pants that exposed six inches of shin. His concept of fashionable footwear is to unscrew the spikes on a pair of golf shoes and wear them around town.

--He holds some unofficial records for being absent-minded. Once, when his wife asked him to take out the trash to the dump, he stuck it in the back of the station wagon and drove off to work. It was still in there when he got home that night.

--On his first recruiting trip with Bass--they were driving from San Diego to Bakersfield--Coryell sat for four hours drawing plays on file cards and flipping them into the back seat. “I was asking myself what in the world I was getting myself into,” Bass said, chuckling.

Critics say Coryell is one-dimensional, uncommunicative and so disinterested in defense that he has hurt his teams by structuring practice almost exclusively around the offense. Among his critics is the man who owns the football team he coaches.

Alex Spanos and Don Coryell have a terrific relationship, as long as Al Saunders is around to fill the lulls in the conversation.

Saunders is the Chargers’ receivers coach, assistant head coach, liaison between owner and coach, and heir apparent to Coryell. He combines the tact of Steve Garvey with the clout of Donald Regan, thus maintaining harmony in the chain of command.

Saunders has assumed the time-consuming administrative and organizational details Coryell never liked.

“Don directs our football fortunes on the field,” Saunders said.

“I can’t tell you how much I believe in him as a human being, and his record of excellence as a football man speaks for itself. I can’t think of a coach whose offense has so dominated the statistics year after year. I don’t think anyone in football fails to recognize how innovative he has been.”

Coryell’s relationship with Spanos isn’t as odd as it may appear, according to Madden.

“Don’s attitude always has been, ‘Hey, just let me coach,’ ” Madden said. “He always wanted to narrow the scope of the job to the things he could do best. He never wanted to be athletic director in college. He just wanted to hire good assistants and zero in on making his offense strong. I would say his relationship (with Spanos) would be very weird if Don wanted to be all-powerful, but that’s not the case.”

Outwardly, Coryell is still in command, or so it appears to Fouts.

“Ernie Zampese still runs the offense, Al coaches the receivers and it seems like the same old show to me,” Fouts said.

Fouts probably is too protective of Coryell to venture a deeper opinion. Last year, when it appeared Coryell was about to be dumped by Spanos, Fouts angrily told a reporter he was tired of the media hounding the coach. In reality, Spanos had set the stage for the possibility of ousting Coryell by saying in training camp he wanted a .500 season or better.

The owner maintained the pressure until only a week remained in the season and the Chargers were assured of at least an 8-8 record. It was then that Spanos rehired Coryell for 1986 with an option year in 1987--with Saunders promoted to assistant head coach.

Coryell seems about as comfortable as possible with the relationship.

“He’s better with the players than ever,” Fouts said. “He’s looser and enjoying himself more, and the team responds positively to that.”

Coryell said it suits him not to have to keep Spanos apprised of the intimate details of the team’s day-to-day business.

“It’s not my responsibility to tell him every little thing,” Coryell said. “If he wants to know something, he calls Al, and I think that’s a good thing.

“From my viewpoint, I have a good relationship with Alex. And with Al Saunders, shoot, he’s such a team man and doesn’t try to be important, I trust him completely. I just want to do what Mr. Spanos deems is best. . . . I have no guilt feelings about being here as coach.”

It was if Coryell has come to terms with being somewhere between a traditional head coach and a figurehead. Spanos seems to have no hesitancy about the three-way relationship. He said he had talked with Madden last spring and had come away feeling that Coryell would do well with a shift in responsibility.

“I’ve never seen Don so happy in the two years I’ve owned the team,” Spanos said. “I’ve been saying that for some time, but now maybe people will believe me.

“Knowing he doesn’t have to fool around with anything but football, Don is happy. His responsibility is just to win football games. There’s no question that Al is the heir apparent to Don, and I think Al feels fortunate to have the coming year to get some guidance from Don. All I’m looking to do is get Don to the Super Bowl, and he knows I’m doing all I can to get him the talent he needs to get there.”

There is more to the Spanos-Coryell-Saunders triad than the men will address publicly.

It is clear, from private discussions with the principals and their associates, that Coryell has little accountability to Spanos. The owner calls the assistant head coach when he wants to know the whys and wherefores.

“Basically, there’s no pressure on Don,” said a man close to the situation. “If you assume the future of the coaching setup has already been decided, then there’s little pressure on Coryell.”

It’s Saunders who is the man in the middle and the man being groomed for the job, according to a well-placed source. It’s almost as if he and Spanos are living together before their impending marriage, as the source put it.

Spanos said that although he does communicate primarily through Saunders, Coryell is always kept informed of the substance of their talks.

“Don is the boss,” Spanos said. “After me, of course.”

Saunders, since the inception of the arrangement, has gone out of his way to stress his loyalty to Coryell. And, because Coryell believes there is nothing devious about Saunders, the relationship probably will endure through the remainder of the season.

Coryell isn’t divulging his plans, and neither is Spanos. However, no one in the Charger front office will be surprised if Coryell retires after this season.

Don Coryell is an institution in San Diego and probably the most popular coach the city has ever seen. Spanos surely took that into consideration in deciding to retain him for this season. Coryell is not, however, exempt from a certain amount of teasing and ridicule on the airwaves and in print.

His speech pattern--a concoction of coaching cliches and garbled syllables--has long been playfully imitated. Joe Bauer, half of the KFMB radio tandem, Hudson and Bauer, loves doing Coryell.

“I try to make him sound intense, but not stupid,” Bauer said. “It’s easy for me to hear him if I just try to see his face. He’s as easy for me as Jimmy Carter or Henry Kissinger.”

Coryell seems rather amused by the attention. “I enjoy it. Shoot, I can’t change myself,” he said. “I’ve had this lisp too long not to be able to laugh about it.”

Coryell and Bauer once attended a charity roast. After doing his shtick, Bauer repaired to the men’s room. The door opened, Coryell entered and slapped Bauer on the back in a friendly gesture. “I had to get a paper towel and dry off my shoes,” Bauer said, laughing at the memory.

Coryell’s ideas of the good life are simple. Take a hike. Peel a banana. Diagram a long pass. When he retires, he wants to explore all that empty land he has flown over en route to games back east.

“I don’t care about living forever, but I do want to live well and really enjoy my life,” Coryell said last week. “As we sit here, my wife is in the Ozarks on a canoe trip. We like to test ourselves, to see if we can do as well this year as last year. It’s not to punish ourselves, just to have fun. Shoot, it only costs $5 a day to go hiking, and it makes me feel young. I love life, and after football, I want to stay strong and healthy.”

Coryell and his wife were fitness addicts long before it was fashionable. They’ve been running for 25 years, “before we knew it was good for you,” he said. “Diet and exercise are a hobby and a way of life for us.”

Coryell is looking forward to the 1986 season, but then he always looks forward. It is one of the cornerstones of his outlook--don’t look back, don’t second-guess yourself, don’t punish yourself for past mistakes.

He believes the Chargers have their best lode of talent in five years and he expects to win 10 to 12 games and reach the playoffs. But he doesn’t push those goals on the players, and he doesn’t bring up past achievements.

“Now is the only time that matters,” he said. “I think about what we can do to make tomorrow better. The challenge to reach the playoffs is there, and I think we all feel it, but I don’t bring it up. I just take it for granted my coaches and players all feel the same way I do.”

Perhaps he can be faulted for not being more inspirational, in the manner of a coach such as Bear Bryant or Woody Hayes. Madden, however, thinks the Coryell approach is fine--for Don Coryell.

“I really don’t know Woody Hayes, but I never heard one of his players say a bad thing about him,” Madden said. “Same thing with Bear Bryant. Same with Don. I never met a player who didn’t love him, and you can go all the way back to his days at Whittier. I put an awful lot of stock on what players say about a coach.”

Madden first was introduced to Coryell at a coaching clinic in the early 1960s. USC Coach John McKay, who had just won a national championship, was speaking on the I-formation, which he credited Coryell with installing for the Trojans. Coryell was the USC backfield coach in 1960.

It has stuck with Madden that Coryell was a master of the running game 25 years ago but changed and became the acknowledged genius of pass offense in pro football. What lingers even more is Coryell’s thoughtfulness, Madden said.

“My first year at San Diego State, we had a big sponsor that was providing a summer job for a kid we were trying to recruit,” Madden said. “We were all set to give this kid a job when one of Don’s former players, Rod Dowhower, was cut by the San Francisco 49ers. Don gave the job to Rod, whose wife had just had a baby. Rod didn’t have any eligibility left and couldn’t help any longer, but that didn’t matter to Don. We are talking about a human being here.”

Coryell, for all his klutzy and withdrawn ways, wants to be viewed as Madden suggested. A guy who cared about others.

“Shoot, I get plenty mad and upset, like everyone,” he said. “But I get over it, and I don’t hold a grudge.

“What I’m proudest of is being able to work with people. I’m proud of the people who worked with me and went on to be a success.

“In my mind, everyone is important. There are all kinds of ways to win. I want to be successful in the framework of being considerate. That’s just the way I was raised. I just try to live the best I can.”

THE CORYELL YEARS Pros

Year Team Record Finish 1973 St. Louis 4-9-1 4th, NFC East 1974 St. Louis 10-4 1st, NFC East 1975 St. Louis 11-3 1st, NFC East 1976 St. Louis 10-4 3rd, NFC East 1977 St. Louis 7-7 3rd, NFC East 1978 San Diego 8-4 4th, AFC West 1979 San Diego 12-4 1st, AFC West 1980 San Diego 11-5 1st, AFC West 1981 San Diego 10-6 1st, AFC West 1982 San Diego 6-3 3rd, AFC West 1983 San Diego 6-10 4th, AFC West 1894 San Diego 7-9 5th, AFC West 1985 San Diego 8-8 4th, AFC West Total 110-76-1

Colleges

Year School Record 1957 Whittier 6-2-1 1958 Whittier 9-1 1959 Whittier 8-2 1961 San Diego State 7-2-1 1962 San Diego State 8-2 1963 San Diego State 7-2 1964 San Diego State 8-2 1965 San Diego State 8-2 1966 San Diego State 11-0 1967 San Diego State 10-1 1968 San Diego State 9-0-1 1969 San Diego State 11-0 1970 San Diego State 9-2 1971 San Diego State 6-5 1972 San Diego State 10-1 Totals 127-24-3