Larry Beightol: New Guy on the Blockers : His Revamped Offensive Line Will Be Under the Gun to Protect and Serve

If there is one member of a football team who receives less attention than the offensive line, it would have to be the offensive line coach.

On most teams, offensive linemen are as anonymous a lot as there is. And as for their coach, well, let’s just say he would have a difficult time being recognized on an American Express commercial.

That perspective established, meet Larry Beightol, Charger offensive line coach.

Beightol, 46, is one of the least visible of the new personnel under first-year Coach Dan Henning, but his players have a big job--providing safe harbor and strong pocket for the best known and possibly most fragile of the new acquisitions, quarterback Jim McMahon.

Given McMahon’s potential worth and propensity for injury, it could be Beightol’s most difficult and important assignment in five seasons of coaching in the National Football League. But outwardly, at least, Beightol is taking the latest challenge no differently than he would if the task were protecting Mark Malone.

“We put a premium on pass protection no matter who our quarterback is,” Beightol said. “That is just part of our job. It’s not like since Jim came over here we started saying, ‘Well, we better starting working on some pass-blocking technique.’ These guys don’t want anybody to get sacked.”

But that does not mean that there will be no sacks, Beightol said. They are inevitable.

“When those guys on the other side of the ball want to get one,” Beightol said, “when they have got it cranked up, it is nearly impossible to stop them.”

But there is more to coaching the offensive line than just pass blocking. Teams run, too, and that is one area in which Beightol’s lines have excelled. In his first NFL job, as offensive line coach under Henning in 1985 and 1986, he helped turn Atlanta from the league’s 15th-ranked running team to the third.

When Henning was hired by the Chargers, he asked Beightol, then at Tampa Bay, to join him again, and gave him the additional title of offensive coordinator.

Beightol wishes the casual fan would notice more about the offensive line than the sacks they allow. But he realizes that lack of recognition is just another part of the job.

The only time much attention is paid to an offensive lineman is when he he commits one of the position’s three costly sins--holding, moving too soon or allowing a sack.

About the only time anyone pays much attention to an offensive line coach is when his players commit all three sins with devilish regularity.

Beightol would just as soon avoid that kind of attention. If doing his job well means anonymity, that’s fine with him.

The work of the offensive line is seldom glamorous, and neither are the practices. To make up for this, some coaches compensate with a little flare.

They scream a little bit more, grunt a little louder and get a little more physically involved in their work. Beightol does all three. He also likes to wear his cap backwards.

This just goes to show how much Beightol enjoys his work.

He has spent the majority of his 22 seasons of college and pro coaching with the offensive line.

Thirteen of those years were with Notre Dame Coach Lou Holtz, first at William & Mary, then at North Carolina State and Arkansas.

He later became offensive coordinator at Missouri for two seasons. That was where he was in 1985 when Henning gave him his first NFL coaching opportunity.

Such a coaching career is not what Beightol said he could have envisioned when he was growing up in Morrisdale, a small coal-mining town in west-central Pennsylvania.

In fact, had it not been for a last-minute decision to participate in a regional summer all-star game after his senior year, he might still be there. Coaches from Catawba College in North Carolina noticed him in the game and offered him a scholarship.

Until then, Beightol said, he said he had not given college much thought.

“To be honest, I wasn’t the greatest student coming out of high school,” Beightol said. “I thought the reason we went to school was to get our lunch. I didn’t go to school for any other reason than that and to play football. I really wasn’t tuned into the academic side of it.”

Beightol accepted the scholarship, and that was the start of what has become a life-long career.

“If I didn’t, I’d probably be working in the coal mines or something like that,” Beightol said. “I’m sure I wouldn’t be here coaching.”

His tenure with the Chargers is only a few months old, and Beightol already is making his mark. He is not afraid to tinker with convention.

He moved Dennis McKnight, a Pro Bowl alternate at left guard, to center, where he joined second-round draft pick Courtney Hall. The move was a signal to 14-year veteran Don Macek, who was coming back from shoulder surgery, that his job was in jeopardy. With McKnight out for the season with a thigh injury, Hall and Macek are now left to battle for the starting job.

He took David Richards, who started every game at right tackle last season, and shifted him to right guard. And two new starting tackles--Brett Miller from Atlanta and Joel Patten from Indianapolis--were added via free agency.

The result is that the Chargers plan to open their season Sunday against the Raiders in the Coliseum with only one starter--left guard Broderick Thompson--in the same position he played in last year’s finale against Kansas City.

“We felt like we had some good players, but we knew if we wanted to have the kind of offensive line we needed, we had to upgrade,” Beightol said. “We needed to shuffle and move people around to see where they could fit in best.”

Beightol said the changes were designed to create a bigger and tougher line than the Chargers have been known for.

“Maybe in the past, (the Chargers) got the reputation of being kind of passive,” Beightol said. “I don’t think that is the case with this group.”

Beightol has worked to develop in the Charger line a rugged personality he hopes will serve them well this season.

“These are hard-working, tough guys,” Beightol said. “They present a blue-collar image. They are not afraid to roll up their sleeves and get down and dirty. That is what it takes in the NFL.

“We might not be the best in any one thing, but with the right combination in all the areas, we can be good enough to win.”