The Next Big Thing: Meet Ken Zampese, the Next Big Head Coach Candidate

Ken Zampese laughs hard when he’s told he is standing on the springboard that should launch him into an NFL head coaching career. 

“I haven’t called a play in the NFL yet,” he told B/R during the offseason, once the laugh subsided. “That’s the last thing on my mind.”

Fair enough. The longtime Bengals quarterbacks coach and new Bengals offensive coordinator has a lot to accomplish at his current job before he worries about the next one. He must guide the offense through significant free-agent losses. He must continue pushing quarterback Andy Dalton. And he has to help them win that elusive first playoff game.

Still, Zampese must know that coordinating the Bengals is a sure gateway to becoming a hot head coaching candidate. His predecessor, Hue Jackson, now coaches the Browns. Previous offensive coordinator Jay Gruden took Washington to the playoffs last year. On the defensive side of the ball, Mike Zimmer coaches a playoff team in Minnesota.

For the son of a coaching legend who has spent 13 seasons on the same rung of the NFL ladder, the chance for sudden, rapid advancement must have a little appeal. Right?

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. First things first.”

Fine. Zampese is still getting used to that “play-calling” thing. But he has spent a lifetime surrounded by some of the greatest play-callers in football history. So that part should come easy.

    

The Miseducation of Ken Zampese

Zampese spent his childhood summers on the University of California at San Diego campus, training camp home of the San Diego Chargers, getting an inside look at one of the NFL’s legendary offenses.

Maybe too much of an inside look.

“After the meetings were over, those guys would go up into the big lounge at UCSD,” Zampese recalled. “They would break out the beer and hard liquor and put the dominoes on the table and go at it, two-on-two, with coaches and scouts sitting around waiting for their turn like it was three-on-three basketball at the rec.”

“And I was sitting in the corner getting educated beyond anything I ever thought was gonna happen, having the time of my life.”

Zampese’s father was Ernie Zampese, Don Coryell’s top offensive lieutenant. The domino players were guys like Dan Fouts, Kellen Winslow, Charlie Joiner and Wes Chandler, superstars of the Chargers’ famed Air Coryell offense, the system that ushered in the modern era of passing-oriented football.

Ken Zampese was in his early teens at the time, a ball boy sharing a dorm room with his father. He painted lines and stenciled numbers on the practice field while his father served as Coryell’s assistant head coach, offensive coordinator and consigliere. Coryell once told Chris Dufresne of the Los Angeles Times that Zampese was “the best offensive coach” he knew. John Madden, who coached in the Coryell circle in the mid-1960s, once said Zampese “may be the top offensive mind in the game.”

Yet Ken Zampese said his father rarely brought football home with him; there were no X and O conversations around the football table. The elder Zampese didn’t want his son following in his coaching footsteps; the money wasn’t good at the time, and the job security has always been awful.

For his part, Ken Zampese didn’t have much interest in joining the family business, even as he set up the practice fields for the Chargers. The younger Zampese played football at the University of San Diego, graduated with a business degree and planned to start climbing the corporate ladder.

“I got a summer job at Wells Fargo. I worked one day and I never went back,” Zampese said. “I couldn’t do it. It wasn’t me.”

Zampese joked that he went to graduate school “to hide.” He became a graduate assistant for the USC football team. Soon, he discovered both a knack and a passion for coaching. “I don’t know if it was running from actual work that led me to this profession, wanting to have more in common with my dad or what I was comfortable doing. Maybe it was all three.” 

But both the older and younger Zampese were reluctant to use nepotism to advance Ken’s career. While Ernie coordinated the Cowboys offense in the latter part of the Troy Aikman-Emmitt Smith-Michael Irvin triplets era, Ken rose through the ranks at Northern Arizona and Miami of Ohio.

Life in the mid-majors introduced Ken Zampese to a new set of coaching influences. There was charismatic USC defensive coach Bob Cope (“He was my first mentor,” Zampese recalls, “He taught me defense. He taught me a lot about life.”). And also Miami of Ohio coach Randy Walker, whose coaching tree includes Sean Payton, Aaron Kromer, current Indiana coach Kevin Wilson and others.

“He’s a difference-maker,” Zampese said of Walker. “He handled the mentality and the attitude of everyone single-handedly. All you had to do was coach.”

Zampese reached the NFL …

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