We seem to be on a run of legendary coaches in our latest NFL 100 posts, and this week is no exception as we feature a coach who many consider to be the father of the modern passing game, Hall of Fame legend Sid Gillman. Gillman cut his teeth as a coach in college as an assistant at Denison, Ohio State and Army before landing head coaching jobs at Miami of Ohio and the University of Cincinnati. An 81-19-2 record as a college head coach got him noticed by the pros and in 1955 he was hired to guide the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams. The club was known for wide open offense and Gillman enhanced that reputation during his tenure there. They reached the league championship game in his first season but lost to the Cleveland Browns. It was a roller coaster ride for the coach for the remainder of his Ram career, although the offense was always capable. After finishing 2-10 in 1959, he was released but landed on his feet by being hired as the head coach of the new team in town, the American Football League’s Los Angeles Chargers. The Chargers, with their new coach roaming the sidelines wearing his trademark bow tie, were an immediate success and the type of team the new league was looking for – featuring an exciting wide open offense that stretched the field with a vertical passing game. The Chargers, who moved to San Diego in 1961 after a single season in L.A., won the Western Division title 5 times in the AFL’s first 6 seasons and captured the league title in 1963 with a rousing 51-10 rout of the Boston Patriots. Al Davis, a football icon who began his pro football career as an assistant on Gillman’s early Charger teams, once said “Sid Gillman brought class to the AFL. Being part of Sid’s organization was like going to a laboratory for the highly developed science of professional football.” Another Hall of Fame coach, Chuck Noll, was also on Gillman’s Charger staff in the AFL’s early years. Gillman left the Chargers when the AFL and NFL officially merged into one league in 1970, but returned for a short stint with the Houston Oilers in 1973 and ’74. His Oiler teams didn’t qualify for the postseason but he lifted the franchise out of the doldrums they had been in before leaving.
Besides Davis and Noll, many coaches either learned from Gillman or copied his offensive philosophies, including Bill Walsh, Bum Phillips, Don Coryell and Dick Vermeil. Coryell was head coach at San Diego State during Gillman’s Charger era and used to bring his team to Charger practices to observe. Vermeil actually hired Gillman as a consultant when he was coach of the Philadelphia Eagles in 1980. Another tribute to Gillman’s genius is the players he developed. His reputation as a quarterback guru played out when 2 of his Ram QBs of the 1950s, Billy Wade and Frank Ryan, won NFL championships, Wade with the 1963 Chicago Bears and Ryan with the 1964 Cleveland Browns. His resume also includes coaching all kinds of Hall of Famers, players like Norm Van Brocklin, Tom Fears, Elroy “Crazy Legs” Hirsch, Les Richter, Ollie Matson, Lance Alworth and Ron Mix, as well as some Hall-worthy players in Ernie Ladd, Earl Faison, Keith Lincoln, Paul Lowe, John Hadl, Tank Younger, Andy Robustelli, Lamar Lundy and Jon Arnett. Gillman may have been a product of pro football of the 1950s and ’60s, but his legacy lives on in the way the modern game is played today.
Coach Gillman, Lance Alworth (19), John Hadl (21)