Chargers Give Henning a Chance to Try to Cure an Ailing Team
The San Diego Chargers hired Washington Redskins assistant Dan Henning Thursday to run a football team that might be better served in its immediate future by Doug Henning.
Dan Henning is a football coach who compiled a four-year record of 22-41-1 with the Atlanta Falcons during his only previous experience as a head coach. Doug Henning is a magician who once made an elephant disappear on television.
“Statistics,” Dan Henning said, defending his record in Atlanta, “ . . . you can do anything you want with them. That statistic does not mean I’m not a good football coach.”
Age, injuries, the end of quarterback Steve Bartkowski’s career and apparent inconsistent ownership provided by the Rankin Smith family might have prevented Henning from doing much of anything with the Falcons. “Let’s just say Dan Henning has another chance,” said Steve Ortmayer, the Chargers’ director of football operations and the man who recommended Henning to owner Alex Spanos.
Henning’s first task with the Chargers will be to pull a quarterback out of his hat and turn a 6-10 team into a playoff contender. The Chargers have given him five years to do so. But if he doesn’t make significant progress before then, he probably will disappear just as quickly as his predecessor, Al Saunders.
Significant progress on the fly won’t be easy. The Chargers’ first-string quarterback at the moment is Mark Malone, who compiled the lowest listed quarterback rating in the AFC each of the last two years. The most valuable member of the Charger defense would appear to be its coordinator, Ron Lynn.
Lynn, one of the finalists to replace Saunders, will remain as defensive coordinator. Henning had little choice in the matter. Ortmayer and Spanos mandated that in the interest of continuity.
Henning said that Lynn’s assistants, defensive line coach Gunther Cunningham and linebacker coach Mike Haluchek, will probably stay, too. Cunningham, though, has talked with other National Football League teams and Lynn said it was not certain that Cunningham would return.
Henning’s field of expertise is on the offensive side of the football. He has coached Don Strock, Bob Griese, Joe Namath and Joe Theismann, among others, in a career that began as an assistant at Florida State in 1968 and included a stop at Virginia Tech and NFL jobs in Houston, New York, Miami, Washington twice, and Atlanta.
His trademarks are an appetite for work during the season, a craving for cigarettes and an undying appreciation for a yarn well spun. His speaking accent is part Queens, where he grew up, and part Virginia, where he was tutored as William & Mary’s quarterback by a skinny backfield coach named Lou Holtz.
Henning, 46, won the Charger job over a group of candidates that included Lynn, former California and Illinois coach Mike White, Chicago assistant Johnny Roland, and Wayne Sevier, the Chargers’ special teams coach. “He was the right man for the job,” Ortmayer said. “The continuity factor was a big factor and his previous head coaching experience in the NFL was very important to me.”
Ortmayer was especially enamored of Henning’s contribution as an offensive assistant to the 1982 Washington Super Bowl victory. Henning left to coach the Falcons, got fired after four years and returned in 1987 to the Redskins. Washington won a second Super Bowl that season.