American professional football coach Ernie Zampese was a man.

He won the 1953 CIF Player of the Year award while playing for Santa Barbara High School. He then played halfback for the USC Trojans in 1955 and 1956.

Throughout his four-decade coaching career, Zampese served as the Chargers, Rams, Cowboys, and Patriots’ offensive coordinator. He never held the position of NFL head coach, yet he seems unconcerned about it. Instead, he was intensely focused on creating a potent passing offense. John Madden, who hired Zampese as an assistant coach at Allan Hancock Junior College in Santa Maria, California, would later remark that if he owned an NFL franchise, Zampese would be the head coach he’d want.

According to Madden, he is currently the best offensive mind in football. “I would appoint Ernie Zampese as the team’s head coach if I were the owner,”

Zampese replaced Madden as an assistant on Don Coryell’s San Diego State staff after graduating from Allan Hancock Junior College, and his long association with Coryell—first at San Diego State and later with the San Diego Chargers—was the most profitable phase of his career.

The Chargers regularly possessed the NFL’s most effective passing offense when Zampese was the receivers coach, associate head coach, and offensive coordinator for the team.

Later, when he was the offensive coordinator for the Cowboys, Zampese won a Super Bowl ring, and he finished his career working as an offensive consultant in Washington.

Ernie Zampese obituary and funeral announcement

His funeral arrangements are on the way.