They’ve Earned a Shot at No. 1

You think Dick Coury isn’t losing a few thousand winks of sleep this week? You think Fritz Shurmur hasn’t entered the Insomniac Hall of Fame yet? Tossing and turning has become their favorite pastime these recent nights. Pillow punching finishes a close second, with milk and cookies a distant third.

The cause for all this sleeplessness is some boyish ambition, some unexpected off-season excitement. It seems the two Ram assistants find themselves among the finalists for a pair of National Football League head coaching jobs--Coury for the Kansas City Chiefs vacancy and Shurmur for the Cleveland Browns opening. Both positions are plums. And both men want a job offer very much.

Coury is 57. Shurmur is 56. They have been football coaches for almost their entire adult lives. They have stared at miles of game film, had more chalk talks than most elementary school teachers. Football is what they love. It is what they know, what they are.

Twenty years ago, they were Young Turks. Coury was at USC, Shurmur at Wyoming. The NFL would soon be theirs for the taking. They’d spend a few seasons learning this and that as assistants and then some smart general manager would be knocking on their door with a head coaching position.

Well, 20 years have passed and there hasn’t been a single rap on wood. There have been inquiries, sure, but no NFL offers.

Coury’s name surfaced once for the Houston Oilers job a few years back and Shurmur’s resume has been passed around on occasion. But that about does it.

Not that Coury and Shurmur didn’t try for jobs; they did. But there was always a certain circumstance or a pecking order or a mandate from an owner that foiled them. Shurmur said enough was enough and became a career assistant. Coury, still smitten, took chances.

So intrigued was Coury with a head coaching spot that he happily accepted a place in the World Football League and the Portland Storm in 1974. The league folded and Coury returned to the NFL for 7 more seasons as an assistant before he got the urge again. This time, he took a head coaching job with the Boston Breakers of the United States Football League, where he won coach of the year honors in 1983 and United Van Lines client of year as the Breakers moved from Boston to New Orleans to Portland before Coury jumped ship and ended up with the Rams.

Now he tries for one of those elusive jobs in the NFL, of which there are only 28.

“I feel that I’m so close in this one,” Coury said in a telephone interview from Mobile, Ala., where the Ram coaching staff has assembled, in part, to prepare the South team for today’s Senior Bowl. “It’s what you work for, and there’s not very many of them. I’m excited. I’d just like to find out (the decision).”

Coury thinks he’ll get a fair shot, though a Kansas City television station reported Friday that former Browns’ Coach Marty Schottenheimer, will be named the Chiefs’ head man on Tuesday. For starters, Coury and new Chief President Carl Petersen go way back, which helps. Coury also has those nearly two decades of professional coaching experience. And he has another theory, which revolves around this idea of, older is better.

“I think what has really helped it is a guy like Jerry Burns (who will be 62 Tuesday),” Coury said. “He took over the Vikings job and turned that franchise around. Then Marv Levy (60) takes Buffalo to the playoffs. I don’t know if there’s any substitute for having coaching experience. I think teams have gone back to thinking experience is hard to come by.”

In his formal interview, the Chiefs asked Coury all sorts of questions. They asked him to pretend he had just been hired. It’s Jan. 21: take us through the year. What’s your plan? What will you do? Who will you hire as assistants? Why? What do you want to accomplish defensively and offensively? What’s your off-season program? Yak, yak, yak.

You think Coury wasn’t prepared? He’s been waiting years to hear those questions.

Shurmur is another story. He had all but given up on a head coaching offer. He wanted one, of course, but not enough to reach for the phone every time a position became available. He had become selective and with good reason.

“I think I have the best assistant’s job in the National Football League,” he said. “If I had the opportunity to make the choice (between a head coaching offer and returning to the Rams), it would not be an easy one.”

That’s right, too. It might take Shurmur maybe, say, 5 or 10 seconds to tell the Browns yes, and the Rams adios.

A strange thing happened to Shurmur shortly after the job opened in Cleveland. He found himself wondering what it would be like to run a team. He found himself wanting to run a team. And then he did something he hasn’t done in a long time. He picked up the phone and called Art Modell, owner of the Browns.

“But the job was open for a week or 10 days before I actually got involved,” Shurmur said. “I really don’t want to be the kind of guy who applies for every job.”

But now that he has, he wouldn’t mind a job offer. Neither would Coury, who has spent time with Shurmur discussing this unique situation of two Ram assistants up for two head coaching positions.

“I usually sleep well all the time,” Shurmur said. “But lately I roll around thinking about it a little bit. It’s on your mind, you bet.”

Said Coury: “You dream about getting an opportunity as a head coach.”

Then here’s to sweet dreams and two old assistants who deserve one legitimate crack at the big time.