The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 69

I 1 6 Pirt Dec. M. 1979 Eoe Atifleles 5hnea San Diego's Other Mountain Man Plays Up a Storm Pf tys I I Iff alike: quiet, tough, great passers with the same great temperament unflappable, always in control of every situation. And in their free time they're the same outdoor types." Coryell: "The thing that worries me the most is that Danny has too much toughness for a man who's not as big as the guys who hit him. I wish we could get him to throw the ball away more but he's always thinking completion." Publicist Rick Smith: "I once congratulated Fouts after he'd tackled a big fullback and he said: 'I'm nails, fella.

Rusty nails. But Tight end Bob Klein thinks fouts stands in so long in the face of a rush because of his exceptional self-confidence. "I've never known a more confident athlete," says the USC veteran of 11 big years with the Rams and Chargers. Other players used to say that of Joe Namath, who remains, in Fouts' opinion, "the best passer ever." The best quarterback, he says, was John Unitas the legend Fouts replaced in San Diego, remarkably enough, the year Unitas finally packed it in. The thing that most impresses San Francisco's coach, Bill Walsh, is his mental toughness.

"Fouts is a man's man," says Walsh, who coached him a year or so. "He'll stand up to the toughest characters on the team." These qualities were all slow to emerge in Fouts, who had few admirers in his first three years in San Diego (1973-75) when the Chargers finished 2-11, 5-9 and 2-12. It is often said he was a "slow bloomer." Almost certainly the problem was basically something else. At least 90 of the problem, no doubt, was the inadequacy in those got to be 6-2 and couldn't dunk a basketball, another avenue closed. But somebody at Oregon liked the way I threw a football and changed my life." Football time in San Diego.

Drill time. Place: the Chargers' practice field near the stadium. The weather: warm and sunny, the kind of California weather that drives numerous Minnesota people, and Oregon people, to relocate hereabouts. An assistant coach yells, "Tweet, tweet," and play begins. Yells it? Yes, Coryell hates real whistles.

He hates air horns, too. His first move last year when Klein hired him was to file all of Tommy Prothro's whistles and horns in an ashcan. Of the two men who make the Chargers what they are, only one is in sight as practice starts the coach, a slight figure with big shoulders and a frighteningly intense expression. On most afternoons, including today, the quarterback is excused from the first half of practice. Still, it isn't hard to find people who want to talk about him.

"I could tell you he's so good he doesn't have to practice and I wouldn't be lying," Coryell says. "But the fact is that Dan takes such a beating every Sunday that I'd rather have him looking at film, or even just resting, than practicing." Fouts will show up later and throw a few of his picture passes, just to keep in shape, but now other people are playing quarterback and general manager Johnny Sanders is speaking of Fouts. "I never thought I'd ever compare anyone else to Bob Waterfield," says Sanders, who as a Rams executive long ago was one of Waterfield's few close friends. "They're very much Don Coryell years of San Diego's personnel as Fouts said in a 1977 courtroom when he held out in a salary dispute and challenged the NFL's basic labor agreement. (He lost.) The other 10 was doubtless that like everyone else, he began as a rookie.

In the last four years, three things have changed for Fouts. He has become an experienced quarterback, he has been joined by a bundle of other talent and he has come under a series of fine coaches, including Walsh, Ray Perkins, Gibbs and Coryell. From the beginning Fouts could throw the ball. Pro coaches and scouts for years have been saying what they're saying now: Although he doesn't have quite as much power as the hardest-throwing passers, nobody has a better touch, or more accuracy. Buy he hasn't always had the coaching and he hasn't always been on a talented team.

From the start that's all he needed. "The NFL shouldn't keep individual statistics," he says when asked about his records. "It's a team game. All I want is 1llth of the credit for a completion. And for an interception," he says, smiling, "1llth of the blame." Continued from First Page "The point is, we'll be able to throw somewhere.

Every pass we have can be defensed by any good team but that leaves something else open. My job is to find what's open." When the other team's defensive coaches go to work on San Diego's offense early in the week at a time when you're looking for their tendenciesaren't they looking in the films for yours? "I assume they are, but it may not help them too much. We have a kind of counter-tendency offense here. It must be hard to get tendencies on us because what we do depends not on the situation we're in but the defense we find. We might throw the same bomb from our own 10 or their 30, regardless of down, distance, time or score.

In Coryell's offense there's a bomb built into every play. I check for that first, then make my checks with the other receivers. If Joe Gibbs has been right on his anticipation, something will be there." Does Gibbs call the plays? "Yes." Would you rather do it yourself? "Sure, any quarterback would. But this system works on our team. There's so much to keep track of and nothing is more important on our club than play-calling: that is, fitting exactly the right play to the anticipated defense." Would a running back like Earl Campbell be more important, if you had him? "We get the effect of a good running attack on this team the way we throw to the backs." How much have the NFL's recent rules changes helped? "Two changes have helped some.

The receivers don't have to worry about being bumped now after they're five yards past the scrimmage line. Secondly, when the ball's gone now (passed) the referees are more vocal in alerting the defensive linemen that the quarterback doesn't have it. But Coryell passed successfully before the rules were changed and he'd pass successfully if they were changed back. He's been throwing since they put air in the ball. Passing is a state of mind nothing else, and certainly not a rules change." What kind of mind does it take? "What it takes is a combination of confidence and courage.

The coach of a passing team has to have confidence in his team and above all, in his ability to prepare the team. And he needs the courage to call pass plays in the many situations when anyone can see runs would be safer. The truest cliche in football is that only three things can happen when you put the ball in the air and two of them are bad (in-completions and interceptions). As a pro quarterback I've found out why most coaches would rather run. And that," says Fouts, "is why I have so tural scientist) both are plainly partial to rural rather than urban splendors.

They fell in love with Oregon as classmates at Eugene. Bend, is this kind of town: When Fouts flew in this season, on a rare football weekend off after a big Thursday night game on national TV, the Hertz people at first refused to rent him a car on grounds they'd never heard of him a four-year star athlete at the state university who'd gone on to even bigger things. "The car people called us up," Rick Schloss of the Chargers says, "and asked: 'Is Mr. Fouts employed by I said: 'Is he standing She said yes and put him on. I said: 'Mr.

Fouts, I really think you ought to get a credit card. That isn't San Diego But you know what? They rented him a car on the strength of a phone call to a stranger. I doubt if any rent-a-car outfit in Los Angeles would do that." Oregon also has beautiful mountain scenery and everything else Dan and Juli want, including skiing and the like in winter, backpacking and the other summer sports when it warms up. "I love the seasons," he says. Their Oregon house, though made of logs, isn't a log cabin.

It's an impressive two-story structure un-painted inside or out but like dark gold velvet in natural wood tones on 20 acres. Most nights Fouts has a fire going in each of his two large stone fireplaces; and most nights the only big decision is whether to sit in front of one or the other. Some days he ducks into Sisters to case the land he owns there on what is the Wilshire-and-Westwood crossroads of a town with, he insists, a future. The rest of the time he loafs and plays. Although he denies it, Fouts may, like Pat Haden, have politics in mind for the future.

At Oregon his field was political science, which he "very much enjoyed" after deciding against journalism, the field of his father, who as an ABC announcer still covers some Chargers games. When questioned Dan is vague on his future. In the San Diego area this season he and his family are living in Rancho Santa Fe, a stone's throw from Chargers owner Gene Klein's new place. Next season they plan to return to Mission Beach and the condominium they own on the water there. Fouts says he could "gladly" live in his home-town, San Francisco, where his goal as a boy when he attended 49er games with his father and played catch with John Brodie wasn't a career as a pro football player but enough proficiency in any sport to get a college scholarship anywhere.

In the end the only offer tie had was Oregon's. "As a kid I thought sports would be my one chance to get a college education, and I was right about that," he says. "But at first I had trouble hitting a curve. Then they started blowing the fastball by me. And when I "Word of Mouth" HAMBURGERS! Dan Fouts much respect for Coryell." Those who know Dan Fouts best invariably use the word mature when talking about him.

He's a dedicated football player now, they all say, "but not always." There was a time when football wasn't his whole life. And in truth, it's only his life now in season. The thing that makes Fouts different is his determination to play the roles of two persons in the same lifetime. In fall and winter, on the one hand, he's the most spotlighted San Diego athlete and one of the most celebrated in the league, particularly in a year like this when his passes are damaging so many other teams. But in the offseason he becomes a kind of recluse.

A mountain man at heart, he retires each year after the last Charger game to a log house in Oregon. "-It's outside of Indian Ford," he says, "which is outside of Sisters (pop. 800) which is outside of Bend." His devotion to football and, in particular, to pass offense is extraordinaryduring the season. He works an 8-to-5 day six days a week and usually takes home some two hours of work at night, watching film in a darkened room with his 17-month-old son at his feet. keep him out of my wife's hair for awhile," he says.) His nominal days off (Tuesdays) are also usually spent on football-related activities, including medical treatments.

And he does all this willingly and enthusiastically and, as a rule, as the center of attention. But he'd really rather be in Oregon and, come January, Fouts is off to Indian Ford. He picks up his family (including the boy and now a girl 2 weeks old) and flies away to God's country. Although Dan was raised in what is probably the most interesting of American cities, San Francisco, "in the shadow of the Golden Gate," he says and although his wife Juli was the South Pasadena daughter of a USC professor (Dr. John Mehl, a na mr i i i if LirV would 2575 W.

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MARTIN CAUTIONED Continued from First Page them or managed them. I'd be very surprised, though, if he stopped paying me." Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kunn, currently on vacation in the Caribbean, has been advised of Martin's statements and an aide, Sandy Hadden, said he planned to brief the commissioner on what transpired at Kingston, R.I. Martin, fired as manager by Steinbrenner last October because of a barroom fight with marshmallow salesman Joseph W. Cooper in Minnesota, created his latest headlines Tuesday night during a question-and-answer session. During the course of the session, Martin was quoted as calling Steinbrenner "a sick person" and added that he would punch Cooper "right in the nose" again if he had it to do all over again.

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I feel sorry for him because of "I have no animosity toward him. I just don't want to be associated with him. I wish him good health, a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. "He can't stop me from saying what I feel. This is the United States of America, not Iran.

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