The Saturday night pep talks were great theater. Players always looked forward to them, with front-row seats highly desirable.
That’s because Don Coryell was a tremendous motivator, and had no internal filter. It all came from the heart, with a couple of pre-speech martinis helping to loosen any inhibitions.
“He wore it all out in the open,” Dan Dierdorf said. “He had no hidden agendas. He couldn’t help himself. It’s what he was, and we all knew it, and we loved him for it.”
With Coryell it was always “us against the world.” Sometimes the motivation would come from newspaper articles that Coryell would bring along.