by Ron Jaworski
At that moment, though, the Raiders were mighty glad they had Raymond Chester in their lineup, because it was his touchdown reception with thirty-nine seconds remaining that tied the game at 24, sending the contest into overtime.
Overtime
The Chargers won the toss but gave the ball back on their very first play when Fouts’s pass was tipped by the Raiders, then caromed off Jefferson’s hands to Millen for an interception. Oakland ran on five straight plays before being stopped on a third-down pass attempt. Chris Bahr entered, hoping to redeem himself after missing four other field goals, but he failed for a fifth time when his kick was partially blocked, allowing San Diego to take over on its own 33.
Fouts opened the drive with a pass to Williams for 11 yards, but then Clarence was dropped for a 6-yard loss on the next play. Facing second-and-16, the Chargers split Winslow out left as the X receiver, matched up against McKinney. Kellen cleared out the middle by running to his left, essentially carrying two defenders with him. This left Joiner with single coverage, and the crafty veteran beat his man for a 28-yard gain. It was another example of the precise timing that was a hallmark of Air Coryell. “Charlie was the first ‘technician’ wide receiver I ever played with,” stated Fouts. “He ran his patterns precisely and correctly every time. His speed running down the field was very similar to my speed setting up in the pocket. So when I hit my fifth step, and he hit his fifth step down the field, the ball was on its way. His head would turn, and the ball would be there.”
Three straight runs from John Cappelletti got the Chargers to the Raiders’ 24. On third down, Winslow set up close to the right tackle on the line of scrimmage, with Jefferson in the left slot and Joiner outside. Oakland countered with base personnel. Winslow released and ran toward the sideline, taking Davis with him. Joiner slanted inside, leaving Jefferson in one-on-one coverage on the left against Lester Hayes whose 13 interceptions would lead the league that year. Jefferson broke to the corner and made a spectacular leaping catch directly over Hayes. “I caught it even though I was looking right into the sun,” recalled Jefferson. “I was on the ground, and for whatever reason, Hayes just stopped. So I simply rolled into the end zone, and the referee put his arms in the air.”
The partisan crowd erupted as Jefferson bounced up off the turf to celebrate the winning score. “J.J. wasn’t the fastest, he wasn’t a burner, but he had body control and great hands,” said Bauer. “Jefferson was one of the few guys in the NFL who could ‘take the judge to court.’ He used to beat Lester Hayes down, and it would just drive Lester the Molester crazy. We loved it. We fed off it. And this time, it got us a W in overtime.”
Going back through my notes, I counted Winslow lining up wide as the X receiver on 27 of the Chargers’ 78 snaps from scrimmage. That means Kellen was performing as a wide receiver on 35 percent of his team’s plays. Forget that this was an astounding total for 1980. You wouldn’t even see so many alignments of this kind in the NFL today by a Dallas Clark or Antonio Gates. San Diego’s 30–24 overtime victory was, in historical context, Kellen Winslow’s coming-out party. The way he was deployed that afternoon by Coryell was unlike anything ever witnessed in an NFL game.
wo weeks after defeating the Raiders, San Diego traded for New Orleans running back Chuck Muncie. “He may have been the most gifted running back ever to play the game,” according to Bauer. “As a Chargers announcer, I’ve watched every one of Ladainian Tomlinson’s carries. I’ve seen Barry Sanders, Marcus Allen, Emmitt Smith, O. J. Simpson. You name them. And I still say Chuck is the baddest runner I have ever seen. He’d have been the best of all time if he’d stayed out of trouble off the field. Just imagine what we could do now with Kellen, three wides, and a back like Muncie. The defense tries to shut down our passing game with six defensive backs, their safeties dropping—and just one linebacker. They’re all going out wide, covering Kellen and the other receivers. We’d just run the stretch play all day, and Muncie would kill them.”
Muncie’s arrival handed Coryell, Gibbs, and Zampese another lethal weapon and sparked even more creative ideas. “That led to us putting another tight end in the game and making him the ‘ace’ back, then putting in different formations all over the place,” explained Gibbs. “That was the evolution of the one-back offense. Of all the people I ever coached with, Coryell was never afraid to try anything. He was very progressive and let his coaches try any idea.” Among those suggestions were all kinds of personnel shifts; pre-snap moves that totally baffled San Diego’s opponents.
When the Chargers put Winslow in motion prior to the snap, it gave San Diego several distinct advantages. It’s considerably harder for a defender to cover someone when he’s forced to move with him before the snap. It’s much easier standing still, when he can square up and set himself before the play begins. And the player in motion knows exactly where he’s going to go, while the defender can only guess. It’s also harder for the defender to change direction. Then there was the basic physical mismatch between Winslow and the defenders of that era. “Kellen was taller and faster than anyone opponents put on him,” said Saunders. “He was at his best in a contested environment. He used what we called ‘basketball skills’ better than any tight end of his time. He could wall off a defender to make the catch. Kellen would run a route right into a defender and knock him back, then break off. Now he’d be open, get the ball, and in the open field he could really run. He was too big for a lot of those defenders to take on.
“A defense had to account for all that shifting—Winslow shifting from backfield to tight end, backs in motion. Don wanted to get an advantage before the snap. Some teams did that with cadence or audibles. Don’s movement created mismatches and confusion with the defense. When I first got to San Diego, I asked Ernie Zampese why they did so much shifting and movement. His reply was, ‘Sometimes we just do it to do it.’ When you shift or go in motion, that causes at least two checks by the defense. So what happens if someone doesn’t hear the check or hears it incorrectly? Now he’s out of position, or you have the wrong defender in place.”
From week to week, the Chargers added more components to their offense, which drove opponents out of their minds. And it wasn’t just an endless parade of men in motion. Coryell was now clustering his receivers in unorthodox ways, utilizing what are known as combination routes. These were patterns linked to the location and grouping of his pass targets, determined by where they lined up in the formation, and with whom they were bunched: other wideouts, tight ends, or even running backs. Winslow appreciated the cerebral nature of these innovations: “That’s all it really is: a time-space continuum. An offense has to exploit that time and space. And the more you have to think about it as a defensive player, the less effective you are at covering all options. As an offense, when we ran plays of simplicity in a complicated way, we improved our odds.”
Broncos defensive coordinator Joe Collier tried to crack the Chargers’ code twice a season, with only mixed results. “Coryell’s teams never showed you the same thing twice,” he stated. “They always seemed to come out with new formations, new motions, new shifts. What we had to do was to play a pretty vanilla defense until we figured out what the hell we should be doing against them. The plays they ended up with would be the same plays they used all year. But it was their way of getting into the plays that caused doubt in our defenses.”
Rod Rust faced the same problems positioning his Chiefs’ defenses. “Against the Chargers, the first thing you had to worry about was getting lined up properly,” he explained. “My last year in Kansas City, we finally figured out what we needed to do, and that was basically by thinking We don’t care where anyone is—whether Kellen was lined up as an X or Z. We were going to line up with our corners outside, safeties inside, linebackers in the box. We were going to defend the one they gave us rather than saying, ‘You’ll cover this guy, you cover that guy'—because if you do that, you’re already behind the curve. I’d made that mistake too many times before. This enabled our play
ers to compete with their players rather than compete with their coaches, trying to figure out where to line up. The genius of what San Diego did was that their players knew what to do better than the defenders, because they moved people around in atypical locations. If you could eliminate the indecision, your defense had a much better chance against them.”
Every NFL offense ever devised can be stopped, however, even Coryell’s Chargers. “One way is by having our offense beat itself with turnovers,” revealed Bauer. “Otherwise, it was because some teams were good at stopping our run. Then those teams could press our pass pocket, because we didn’t roll the pocket that much. They’d have to guess, take a chance of their own by giving us a false look on defense. The teams that put pressure on Dan were the ones who gave us fits. Whether it was overloading personnel, an individual mismatch, blitzes, stunts, you’ve got to press the pocket inside, get in the face of the quarterback, and make him move his feet. The other thing is, if you’ve got physical corners that can get a good jam on our guys releasing, our timing routes could get disrupted.”
Obviously, teams did find ways to defeat the Chargers, because San Diego never reached the Super Bowl during Coryell’s tenure. Some believe it was because the defensive units never performed at the same high levels as the offense. “During practices, Don was focused on throwing and running the ball—never on defense,” admitted Tom Bass, who served four years as Chargers defensive coordinator. “This was true at San Diego State and in the pros. He was very friendly with the players in the locker room, kidding around with them, but as far as worrying about defensive schemes or trying to coach these guys—no chance. He never wanted to be briefed about defensive game plans; it was totally up to me. He was so in love with the other side of the ball, especially in the eighties when he had the kinds of players he had with the Chargers. In planning and designing defense, he simply had no interest.”
Although Coryell never won a Lombardi Trophy with his schemes, several of his disciples did. Joe Gibbs went to Washington the very next year, carrying Coryell’s system in his briefcase. He added his own wrinkles to the offense and won three Super Bowls with it for the Redskins. When Zampese coached with the Rams in the late eighties, he taught the system to a young staff assistant named Norv Turner. A few years later, Norv ran Coryell’s exact system as offensive coordinator with the Dallas Cowboys and claimed back-to-back Super Bowl titles in 1992 and ‘93.
When people discuss the great quarterbacks of all time, Troy Aikman rarely gets a mention. But I think he was the ultimate timing and rhythm passer. He wasn’t a good deep thrower but was very accurate in short and intermediate passes. He was a bigger Dan Fouts—with a stronger arm—who could throw the skinny post, the square-in. The eighties Chargers offense didn’t do much with sideline throws. They were an inside route-running team. But Troy’s accuracy on those deep comebacks made them a major part of the nineties Cowboys offense, especially with Michael Irvin, who ran very good routes. That was just a fun offense to watch. Norv has since utilized the Air Coryell system everywhere he’s been, and he’s still running it today with quarterback Philip Rivers and the explosive twenty-first-century version of the Chargers’ offense.
In 1999 Dick Vermeil’s St. Louis Rams won a championship by basing their offense on Coryell’s principles. (The franchise had moved from Los Angeles to St. Louis before the 1995 season, seven years after the Cardinals had jilted the city and taken up with Phoenix, Arizona.) “When St. Louis won the Super Bowl, I could have stepped into the Rams huddle and run their plays,” insisted Winslow. “It was the same offense.” Around the same time, other teams around the league incorporated its basic concepts. “With the Chiefs and Redskins, we even used Ernie Zampese’s name to identify some of our offensive packages, because the ideas were driven by concepts that he implemented,” revealed Marty Schottenheimer, head coach for four teams. “Putting three receivers on one side and flooding that area is a concept that probably had its genesis with those Chargers teams.”
The Coryell offense can reap major benefits for coaches willing to take full advantage of its many features. “Assistants coming to teams that run it have to get used to the volume available in these plays,” said Saunders, who coached Don’s system with the Chargers, Rams, Chiefs, and Redskins. “At first it can be intimidating to them. Because there is so much to it, the reaction by some coaches is to reduce what you do. But then you lose the effectiveness of the system, and a lot of its versatility is no longer there. Used to its maximum, it’s pretty tough to stop.”
Coryell’s offense introduced both strategic innovation and a new vocabulary to the NFL. My Monday Night Football partner Jon Gruden learned the term “joker” when he was an assistant with the 49ers in the early nineties. “Winslow was a pure joker,” says Gruden. “He could line up in a three-point stance next to the tackle and power block. On the next snap, he’d be in motion, then be out there in a two-point stance. He was comfortable in any formation. And you never knew where he was going to be. That’s what a joker is.
“There’s a potful of jokers in today’s game, but they didn’t exist until after Winslow did it. In San Francisco, we used running backs as jokers—Ricky Watters or Charlie Garner. The Eagles used Brian Westbrook that way. You can present a four-wide look in regular personnel because you line the back up as a receiver. These are the guys you’re looking for today; the ones who create matchup problems. Everybody wants them.”
According to Bill Belichick, Winslow ushered in the age of tight ends who were more pass catchers than blockers. “Go back to some of the great tight ends: Ditka, Mackey, Chester, Mark Bavaro, Keith Jackson. They were great players in both the passing game and the point of attack in the running game. Now you see guys who are just receivers playing tight end—people like Dallas Clark, Owen Daniels, Tony Gonzalez, and Antonio Gates. None of them are really blocking at the point of attack, and they don’t want to block there either. They kind of do it because they’re big and take up space, but that’s not their thing. That position has evolved to the point where, each year in the draft, there are fewer athletes who are block-on-the-line tight ends. Those types are getting harder to find. The pass-receiving tight ends are the ones getting paid the big money—Jeremy Shockey, Gates, and those guys—catching passes and scoring touchdowns. They’re all direct descendants of Kellen Winslow.”
Winslow’s overall accomplishments and impact on the game made him a first-ballot choice for the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1995. His greatest hope was that his former head coach could join him in Canton, Ohio. Don made it as far as the finalists’ level before missing the last cut in the 2010 balloting. Sadly, just five months later, Coryell passed away at the age of 85. “When voters for the Hall make their choices, they look at stats. If they look at impact and innovation, Don Coryell is a slam-dunk,” Winslow argued. “I hear stuff like, ‘He never won a Super Bowl.’ But that’s not what it’s about. He was a great innovator with a huge impact on the game. How in the world can Joiner, Fouts, Winslow, and Joe Gibbs be in the Hall and Coryell not be there? A lot of what Walsh did in San Francisco is a variation of what we did in San Diego. What Gibbs ran in Washington was a variation of what Air Coryell did. It’s a shame they don’t recognize the impact and innovation he’s had on the game of football. He changed the way teams draft, how clubs have to stock their rosters. And if that’s not enough, he was also the first coach to win a hundred games in both college and the NFL.”
Joe Collier also recognizes the changes that Coryell’s changes imposed on defenses. “By using multiple receivers, Don forced an evolution on both sides of the ball, because defenses now had to counter what he was doing by bringing in different packages to play against them. A lot of defensive backs should thank Coach Coryell for the fact that he forced teams to draft more of them. And scouts now had to look for linebackers who were ‘in-between’ guys, athletes who could run with that inside receiver.”
Don Coryell’s greatest impact may have been on the attitudes of offen
sive philosophies. Grind-it-out attacks would eventually give way to much more aggressive strategies, all because of him. “Don knew that if you had better players, you would win,” explained Bass. “There are some coaches who feel they’re the genius and the players are in a supporting role. Don did not believe in that; he felt his athletes were the most important. By the time he got to the Chargers, he realized he finally had the total package for talent—guys who could do anything. Previously he’d have to attack defenses. Now he believed that defenses had to stop what the Chargers were doing. That mind-set difference is really important.”
Dan Fouts agrees emphatically: “I don’t think there’s ever been a coach who was more courageous about creating offense, especially with formations and his use of personnel. If you look at the way the game is played today, his influence is everywhere. You look at four-and five-receiver sets, then you look at the other side of the ball with five and six defensive backs. Before Coryell, who knew about nickel or dime backs or anything like that? He has contributed to this game. He has made the game better, more enjoyable.”
Joe Gibbs owes much of his NFL success to Coryell. “My owner with the Redskins was Jack Kent Cooke, and Mr. Cooke used to say, ‘There are no geniuses in football. There are probably only two in the whole world—and they’re not in football.’ I would disagree and say that one of the geniuses in football was Don Coryell.”
I’ll give my favorite coach, Dick Vermeil, the last word on this great innovator. “You look at the records he set—the route philosophies, the speed cuts, the vertical passing game, speed screens, quick screens. All these things stemmed from the founder, Don Coryell. No offense in the NFL, when applied and coached correctly with everyday good personnel, performs more efficiently or scores more points than the Coryell-influenced offense. He deserves to be in the Hall of Fame.”