DON CORYELL : Coach of Passing Machine Is, Image Aside, Human

SAN DIEGO —  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.

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

Don Coryell, whose San Diego Chargers play the Rams tonight at Anaheim in an exhibition game, is among the most misunderstood coaches in pro football. But that’s at least 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 ranks him with Al Davis.

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

Madden agrees.

“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 hell of a 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 on 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 demeaning, relationship with Spanos in order to have another shot at the playoffs. “It’s the only shot he’s got,” an associate said.

A man with flaws both humorous and infuriating, Coryell is subjected to his share of putdowns.

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, his nickname, the Duck.

--Once, before a crowd of 50,000, he wore high-water pants that exposed six inches of shin. His concept of fashionable footwear? Golf shoes with the spikes unscrewed.

--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 that Coryell is one-dimensional, uncommunicative and so uninterested in defense that he has hurt his teams by structuring practices almost exclusively around the offense. Among his critics is the man who owns the football team Coryell coaches. 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’ receiver coach, liaison between owner and head coach, and heir apparent to Coryell.

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 that Coryell was about to be dumped by Spanos, Fouts angrily told a reporter that he was tired of the media hounding the coach. In reality, Spanos had set the stage for the possible ouster of Coryell by saying in training camp that 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. Then Spanos rehired Coryell for 1986 with an option year in 1987--and promoted Saunders 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.”

Spanos apparently has 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.”

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 apparently believes there is nothing devious about Saunders, the relationship probably will endure through the season.

Coryell isn’t divulging his plans, and neither is Spanos. No one in the Charger front office, however, 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 had. Spanos surely took that into consideration in deciding to rehire him for this season. Coryell is not, however, exempt from a certain amount of media teasing.

His speech pattern, which combines coaching cliches and garbled phrases, has long been imitated by Joe Bauer, half of the popular KFMB radio tandem, Hudson and Bauer.

“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,” he said. “Shoot, I can’t change myself. 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 playfully slapped Bauer on the back. “I had to get a paper towel and dry off my shoes,” Bauer said, laughing at the memory.

The following is a condensed transcript of a mock phone interview Mac Hudson conducted last season with Bauer, alias Coryell. The interview touches upon Coryell’s worst nightmare, losing Fouts, which has happened for periods of the last three seasons.

Coryell: Coach’s office.

Hudson: How are ya? The team lost yesterday. And I guess it’s pretty bad you lost Dan Fouts.

Coryell: Yeah, you don’t have his phone number, do you?

Hudson: We talked to him this morning, but he doesn’t want us to give out his number.

Coryell: I was watching films this morning and I didn’t get a chance to listen.

Hudson: He sounded OK. He said it wasn’t as bad as a lot of people thought. He thought he’d be out for three to six weeks.

Coryell: Aaaaaaaaaaagggggh!

Hudson: Hello? Don? Coach? What did you want to talk to Dan about?

Coryell: Well, I thought he might know some quarterbacks. He must run into them in the off-season. I got Bobby Layne’s number. Shack Harris, what did I do with his number? Y.A. Tittle? Norm Van Brocklin? Shoot, heck, he’s dead, isn’t he?

Hudson: Mark Herrmann did a pretty good job last week. He threw for about 300 yards.

Coryell: That was to Seattle. He threw for about 50 yards to our guys.

Hudson: It wasn’t that bad.

Coryell: Let me ask you a question. I read in the paper Jack McKeon is trying to trade Mark Herrmann. He can’t do that. Just because we’re in the same building, he can’t take my players.

Hudson: No, coach. That was Mark Thurmond. Thur- mond.

Coryell: Herrmann, Thurman, Thumper, Lumper. Did we get ahold of Roman Gabriel yet? Billy Wade, Johnny Hadl, just get me a guy who can play.

Coryell’s idea of the good life is 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 on the way to games.

“I don’t care about living forever, but I do want to live well and really enjoy my life,” Coryell said. “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 have been runners 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 that 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, said that Coryell’s 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 (College). I put an awful lot of stock in what players say about a coach.”

Madden was introduced to Coryell at a coaching clinic in the early 1960s. John McKay, who had just won a national championship at USC, was speaking on the I-formation, which he credited Coryell with installing for the Trojans. Coryell was USC’s 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 the passing offense in pro football. But 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.”