What Did Bill Walsh Have to Do with Coryell’s Hall Nomination? Plenty

(EDITOR’S NOTE: To listen to Dan Fouts, click on the following link: Ep 120: Hall of Famer Dan Fouts Joins To Talk Don Coryell (spreaker.com)

When the Pro Football Hall-of-Fame’s coach/contributor committee met this week to name a candidate for the Class of 2023, Don Coryell was not on its short list. However, after four hours of deliberation, he was its choice.

So what happened? Bill Walsh, that’s what.

That requires an explanation, so let me begin. Rewind the audiotape to Tuesday when Coryell – the former Cardinals’ and Chargers’ head coach — was the 10th of 12 candidates presented to the committee. After voter Jim Trotter of the NFL Media made an impassioned opening address, former San Diego quarterback Dan Fouts – also a Hall-of-Fame voter and member of the 12-person coach/contributor committee – followed with a litany of testimonials from Hall-of-Fame coaches.

Bill Walsh was one of them.

Fouts didn’t recite something Walsh said. Instead, he read what Walsh wrote in a handwritten letter he sent to Coryell in 1995. Fouts worked under Walsh for one season in San Diego (1976 when Walsh was an assistant there) and was a Hall-of-Fame inductee in the same class (1993) as Fouts. So the two not only knew each other; they had a long and friendly relationship.

“I had a great relationship with him and miss him dearly,” Fouts said of Walsh on the latest “Eye Test for Two” podcast. “In 1995 he sent me a copy of the letter that he sent Don Coryell. The letter just explained to Don how much Bill admired him and how much he learned from him and how much he changed the game.

“I thought that the letter was so powerful that I had to share it with the voters because here is one Super Bowl-winning champion, Hall-of-Fame coach. (It gives you) kind of a peek inside his mind in the way that he respected Don Coryell. “

He’s right about that. With Fouts reading the letter as he held it in his hand, it served as Walsh’s voice … and was so “powerful,” as Fouts put it, that more than one voter afterward said he thought it tilted the room in Coryell’s direction.

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Maybe. This was Coryell’s seventh time as a Hall-of-Fame finalist, and voters never heard of the letter … or Walsh’s comments … until Fouts spoke. But there’s a reason: By Fouts’ own admission, he stowed it away in a desk drawer years ago and had forgotten about it.

Until this year.

“One of the crazy things about life,” Fouts said, “is that about six months ago, I was cleaning out a drawer in my desk, and I found that letter. And I said, ‘Oh, my gosh, this is unbelievable.’ I had forgotten I had put it in this drawer so many years ago … you know, 1995. So, anyway, I wanted to share that and really have the voters feel what Bill Walsh felt and how he felt about Don Coryell.”

He succeeded.

When Coryell’s name was announced to the coach/contributor committee, Fouts was so overwhelmed that he buried his head in his hands, sitting motionless for several seconds. Asked afterward what he was experiencing at that moment – relief or emotion – he said, “A little of both.”

That is understandable. Coryell was first presented to voters as a modern-era finalist in 2010 and once made the cut from 15 to 10 (2016). So he’s been close before. But his candidacy seemed to lose momentum when he was passed over for the Centennial Class of 2020 and the two years (2021-22) of the coaches’ category.

However, with the creation this year of the combined coach/contributor category, Coryell was back on the radar – mostly because of the enormous impact he had on the passing game and the defenses that had to combat it. Nevertheless, he wasn’t considered a favorite entering Tuesday.

“I’m just so darned happy and at a loss for words,” Fouts said.

Coryell will be presented as the lone coach/contributor candidate for induction to the Class of 2023 when the Hall’s board of 49 selectors meets prior to Super Bowl LVII, presumably in mid-to-late January. If he gains the approval of 40 of the voters, he will be enshrined.

“It’s been so many times that Don has been a finalist, as we all know,” Fouts said. “I was just bracing for more disappointment, really, because it’s such a strong class and so many worthy candidates that fit the bill in the coach/contributor category. But nobody fit it exactly to a tee as Don Coryell did.

“Still, you never know. I’m still very concerned and nervous about the next step. We’ve been there before with coach Coryell and been turned away. So, I’m not taking anything for granted.”