Coryell Finds That There Is More to Life Than Football

After 35 years of mapping schemes that helped revolutionize NFL offenses, Don Coryell is getting used to life without football.

“I’m adjusting, but I don’t listen to radio or TV. I’m still pretty close to this team and I think it would hurt,” said Coryell, 62, who resigned then retired midway through his ninth season with the San Diego Chargers.

“I think I’ll be very satisfied remembering the good times and wishing they could have been a little better.”

The only coach to win more than 100 games at the collegiate and professional levels, Coryell won acclaim for his innovations. But he never escaped the critics who blamed the Chargers’ defensive failings on Coryell’s preoccupation with scoring tactics.

“People can say or write anything they want to. In my own mind, I know that is not true,” he said.

His chief critic had been Charger owner Alex Spanos, who believed the attention lavished on “Air Coryell” allowed the San Diego defensive unit to decay.

Spanos also disliked the Chargers’ finesse image at a time when physical defenses, as epitomized by the Chicago Bears, were getting the better of teams with flashy offenses.

One of Coryell’s fundamental beliefs was that a superior passing game was the only way to consistently beat physically superior opponents.

Although Coryell had taken the Chargers to the playoffs four straight years, starting in 1979, Spanos made no attempt to talk him out of quitting last Oct. 29. San Diego was off to a 1-7 start, the worst for Coryell in his 35 years of coaching. He was replaced by assistant head coach Al Saunders.

“If Don felt this was the best thing for us, then God bless him,” Spanos said the day Coryell quit.

Coryell, who last had a winning season in the strike-shortened 1982 season, said the criticism didn’t bother him nor did it sour him on the game.

“But you find out who your true friends are when you’re losing,” he said.

Coryell arrived in San Diego in 1978 after the Chargers gave up a third-round draft choice to free him from his contract with the St. Louis Cardinals. After five seasons in St. Louis in which the “Cardiac Cardinals” won two division titles, Coryell was fired in a dispute with ownership over drafting authority but still had contractual obligations until the deal was worked out.

Under Coryell, who fashioned a 114-88 record as an NFL head coach, the Chargers built a dazzling offense that, since 1979, scored more points, ran more plays and produced more yards than any other team in the NFL.

Indeed, since Coryell entered the NFL in 1973, passing yardage is up an average of 63 yards a game (prior to the 1986 season).

“When he was with St. Louis, he was far ahead of everybody as far as what they did with the ball. When he went to San Diego, he was one of the first real forerunners of the passing game we see today,” Dallas Coach Tom Landry said. “It was a shame he could never make it to the Super Bowl. He would deserve that kind of award for the kind of offense he had.”

“It was always exciting to play one of his teams because you always had to be at your best to stop them,” Raider Coach Tom Flores said.

A former Army paratrooper who played defensive back at the University of Washington, Coryell accepted his first coaching assignment as an assistant at Punahou Academy in Honolulu in 1951. He coached two seasons at the University of Columbia in Vancouver before becoming coach at Wenatchee (Wash.) Junior College in 1955.

He also coached at Whittier College for three seasons, ending in 1959, before a one-year stint as an assistant to John McKay at Southern Cal and a 12-year reign at San Diego State that served as his springboard to the NFL. He was 127-24-3 as a college head coach.

But it was while he was at Wenatchee that Coryell developed the I-formation, an innovation he values above the strides he made in the passing game. He introduced McKay to the formation in 1960 and it has become a fixture at Southern Cal, where four tailbacks have won the Heisman Trophy.

“I am more proud of that than anything else because that was mine,” Coryell said.

Joe Gibbs, who played under Coryell at San Diego State and was his assistant at St. Louis and San Diego before becoming the Redskins’ coach, said Coryell’s greatest strength was his flexibility.

“He showed tremendous intensity. He got ready for every game just like he was going to play in it,” Gibbs said. “I watched him from being run-oriented in college to passing almost every down in the pros. Don could adjust to his talent.

“He’d try anything, make any change. It was a quality I learned from him. I used to be so strict, so absolute. He was the opposite.”