[Elvis]

Father of Modern Passing Game, Don Coryell, Finally Gets Hall Call

Clark JudgeSenior Writer
February 9, 2023 4 min read

Don Coryell has been elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and that should come as no surprise. He should’ve been enshrined years ago. But what doesn’t make sense is why it took him so long to get there.

A seven-time finalist, Coryell crossed the finish line Thursday night as a coach/contributor candidate for the Hall’s Class of 2023. It’s the first year for the category, and, as it turns out, it was the perfect fit for the former head coach who’d been repeatedly overlooked.

So what changed? One word: Contributor. For the first time, it wasn’t only Coryell’s coaching record that could be discussed; it could be — no, would be — his impact on the game, too, and there is no overstating the importance of that move.

“The focus on the contribution side is what tipped it in his favor,” said Hall of Fame quarterback Dan Fouts, who played for Coryell and is a Hall of Fame voter. “The voters that were against him no longer had an argument.”

Bingo.

Instead of focusing on Coryell’s playoff record, a 3-6 mark that included no Super Bowls, the Hall’s board of 49 selectors was asked to consider his contributions as an innovator, too — and they were considerable. In fact, almost everywhere you look today you find reminders of the Air Coryell attack in San Diego that operated more like a blitzkrieg.

Pre-snap motion? Coryell. Wide receivers dressed as tight ends? Coryell. Single-back alignments? Coryell. But don’t stop there. Coryell’s impact extended to the other side of the line of scrimmage. Defenses had to adjust to combat the havoc Air Coryell unleashed, with Buddy Ryan’s “46” defense in Chicago the most notable example.

“Don is the father of the modern passing game,” former coach Mike Martz once said. “You look around the NFL right now, and so many teams are running versions of the Coryell offense. … He changed the game. I’m not sure why that hasn’t been acknowledged by the Pro Football Hall of Fame.”

It has. Finally. And strike up the band.

Coryell’s trendsetting didn’t start in the pros. It goes back to his days as a coach at Wenatchee Junior College. At Coryell’s memorial service in 2010, an emotional John Madden recalled a coaching clinic in the early 1960s when John McKay, then the head coach at USC, talked about what Madden called “the hot thing then” – the I-formation. McKay said it wasn’t his idea; it was introduced by one of his assistants.

Don Coryell.

When he joined St. Louis in 1973, Coryell brought the single-back, two-tight end package – with Jackie Smith and J.V. Cain the tight ends. Then in 1978 he moved on to San Diego, where he revolutionized the passing game with Hall of Fame tight end Kellen Winslow. The mismatches he was able to create through pre-snap motion made such an impact that Winslow led the league in receptions in 1980-81, a first for a tight end in consecutive seasons.

“In the offense we won the Super Bowl with in 1999, the foundation was Don Coryell,” said Hall of Fame coach Dick Vermeil. “The route philosophies, the passing game … everything stemmed from the founder, Don Coryell. The genius.”

In other words, Martz was right. Coryell changed the game.

But that wasn’t enough to put him to Canton as a modern-era or coaching candidate. Defined solely by his won-loss record, he always lost momentum once the conversation got around to that 3-6 playoff record. Had the Hall not combined coaches with contributors – defined as non-players and non-coaches – in a new category for the Class of 2023, Coryell’s situation wouldn’t have changed. He’d still be on the outside looking in.

Given that he was a Top-10 modern-era finalist in 2016, that makes no sense. But for some reason, his candidacy went kaput after the creation of a separate coaches’ category for the Centennial Class in 2020. That seems illogical, too, but look what happened: In the first year, Jimmy Johnson and Bill Cowher were elected, even though only Johnson was a modern-era finalist (2015). Then, in 2021, Tom Flores was enshrined. One year later, it was Vermeil.

Coryell was nowhere on the radar.

Yet he twice raised the Titanic, putting the woebegone St. Louis Cardinals and San Diego Chargers back on the NFL map. He also had more regular-season wins (111) than Flores (97) or Johnson (80) and a better winning percentage (.572) than Johnson (.556), Flores (.527) and Vermeil (.524).

Granted, those coaches won Super Bowls. In fact, Johnson and Flores won two apiece, and there we go again with the playoff rap. But if that’s what matters most, then why was George Allen enshrined in 2002? He was 2-7 in the postseason and lost his only Super Bowl. That’s not a knock on Allen. It’s a defense of Coryell.

If Lombardi Trophies and playoff records are measuring sticks for Canton – and more than one voter has said they are — how is it that they don’t matter for one coach and do for another? So Coryell didn’t reach a Super Bowl. His acolytes did. Joe Gibbs, Ernie Zampese, Norv Turner and Mike Martz combined for seven Lombardi Trophies.

“If you talk about impact on the game,” said Hall of Fame coach Tony Dungy, “(and) training other coaches – John Madden, Bill Walsh, Joe Gibbs, to name a few — and influencing how other things are done, Don Coryell is probably right up there with Paul Brown. He’s a genius.”

He’s also a Hall of Famer. And it’s about time.

Clark Judge covered the NFL as a beat reporter and columnist for almost 40 years. He is also a longtime Pro Football Hall of Fame voter. Follow him on Twitter @clarkjudgeTOF.

[three rolled tacos]

Bummer Air Coryell didn't live to see this tremendous honor be bestowed upon him. Should've happened long ago.

[Elvis]

https://theathletic.com/4746788/2023/08 ... rs-legacy/

Don Coryell’s Hall of Fame legacy: Today’s NFL offenses still have his fingerprints

By Daniel Popper
Aug. 4, 2023

In July 2010, at a memorial service in San Diego to celebrate the life of legendary coach Don Coryell, John Madden spoke in remembrance of his mentor and friend.

Coryell had died earlier that month at age 85, and the crowd was full of his former players and assistant coaches — testaments to the immense impact Coryell had on football and, more importantly, on the lives of so many who loved him and the game.

“I’m sitting down there in front on the corner and next to me is Joe Gibbs, next to him is Dan Fouts, and the three of us are in the Hall of Fame because of Don Coryell,” Madden said then, choking back tears. “Something is missing.”

Thirteen years later, that something missing has been rectified. This weekend in Canton, Ohio, Coryell will be posthumously enshrined into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, nearly 37 years after he coached his final game for the San Diego Chargers.

“Finally,” said Al Saunders, an assistant under Coryell for four seasons with the Chargers from 1983 to ’86.

It is impossible to tell the story of the NFL without spending at least several chapters on Coryell, who first joined the league in 1973 as head coach of the St. Louis Cardinals. During his eight-season run as Chargers coach, Coryell — with Hall of Fame players including quarterback Fouts, tight end Kellen Winslow and receiver Charlie Joiner — engineered the most prolific passing offense the league had ever seen. The aggressive, downfield passing attack earned the moniker “Air Coryell,” and many of the concepts and philosophies are still prevalent in the NFL today.



The Chargers led the league in total offense five times in Coryell’s eight seasons, including three straight from 1980 to ’82. Fouts threw for more than 4,000 yards in three straight seasons from 1979 to ’81. Before then, only Joe Namath in 1967 had ever eclipsed the 4,000-yard mark.

“The style of offense was way ahead of the game at that time,” Saunders said.

Coryell was an innovator, both in his schematics and how he coached his players.

“The thing about Coryell is he’d look at a player and see what type of athlete he was and then ask him, ‘Do you think you can do this?’ Or, ‘Do you think you can do that?’ Or put him in a position to do these different things,” said Fouts, who will present for Coryell at the enshrinement ceremony Saturday. “It was a fearlessness on Coryell’s part, which was really a trademark of his.”

Winslow was a shining example of this. Coryell changed the way tight ends were used, shifting the position from a run-first, hand-in-the-dirt blocker to a movement mismatch chess piece in the passing game.

“We were probably the first team that really utilized tight ends in a movement fashion, not only to determine the coverage but also to get a mismatch that you wanted in a one-on-one situation,” Saunders said.

Winslow’s record 1,327 receiving yards in 1980 stood as the tight-end record for more than three decades. Joiner topped 1,000 yards in three straight seasons from 1979 to ’81.

“One of the big things about Coryell and the way he treated us is that he gave us ownership in the offense,” Fouts said. “He took our ideas and he took our talents, and when you do that as a coach, you make the player better because now the player is wanting to pay off that confidence and make sure that his ideas work. So he’s going to try harder to make them all work.”

Coryell’s ideas proliferated around the league during and after his coaching career.

After serving as Coryell’s offensive coordinator for two seasons in 1979 and ’80, Gibbs took the head coaching job in Washington. Over 11 seasons as Washington’s head coach, Gibbs won three Super Bowls and finished in the top 10 in total offense in all but two seasons.

Madden coached under Coryell while at San Diego State from 1964 to ’66. Coryell won 104 games during his 12 years as SDSU head coach. Madden went on to win a Super Bowl as Oakland Raiders head coach in 1976.

Ernie Zampese served as a Coryell assistant with the Chargers from 1979 to ’86. In 1987, Zampese became the offensive coordinator with the Los Angeles Rams. There, he taught a young Norv Turner, who was the Rams receivers coach from 1985 to ’90. Turner became the Dallas Cowboys offensive coordinator in 1991 and went on to win back-to-back Super Bowls in Dallas in 1992 and ’93. The Turner branches of the Coryell tree remain in the NFL today. Turner gave current Indianapolis Colts head coach Shane Steichen his first NFL coaching opportunity in 2011, when Turner was Chargers head coach. Steichen coached under Turner for his first three NFL seasons.

Zampese also groomed Mike Martz in the early ’90s with the Rams. Martz was the Rams’ quarterbacks coach in 1992 and ’93 when Zampese was the offensive coordinator there. Martz then turned the Air Coryell offense into the Greatest Show On Turf and won a Super Bowl as Rams offensive coordinator in 1999.

Coryell’s contributions are woven into the very fabric of the NFL.

And now those contributions will be properly recognized.

“It was all Coryell’s genius,” Fouts said.

[PARAM]

Bummer Air Coryell didn't live to see this tremendous honor be bestowed upon him. Should've happened long ago.

When you take 2 different franchises into the top 10 consistently on offense, you're a pretty smart guy. When your philosphy changes the game of football, you are not HOF worthy but HOF deserved. I know it may sound odd but he should have been voted in the season after the 2001 Rams scored 500 points to make it three in a row. Today's NFL is Don Coryell's philosophy.

St. Louis Offense 1973-77:

Jim Hart, Terry Metcalf, Otis Anderson, Mel Gray, Jackie Smith.....
Rank in points: #11, 9, 7, 8, 11
Rank in yards: #12, 10, 5, 3, 7

San Diego Offense 1978-86

Dan Fouts, Lydell Mitchell, Chuck Muncie, Lionel James, John Jefferson, Charlie Joiner, Wes Chandler, Kellen Winslow

Rank in points: #6, 2, 4, 1, 1, 12, 6, 1
Rank in yards: #4, 5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 4, 1 (top 5 for 8 years!!!....and in 11 straight seasons with 2 different teams, top five 10 times!!!!.....most head coaches don't have HC careers half that long)

Sometimes I wonder about the politics of HOF decisions. Name a more innovative (and successful) offensive mind not named Bill Walsh or Paul Brown.