Here's a front page story in the S.F. paper for a few of you interested in Bill Walsh and what he did for the NFL. I had no idea some of the things he had a hand in over the years.
BILL WALSH 1931-2007
THE GENIUS
by Tom FitzGerald
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Bill Walsh, the imaginative and charismatic coach who took over a downtrodden 49ers team and built one of the greatest franchises in NFL history, died Monday morning at his home in Woodside at the age of 75 after a three-year struggle with leukemia.
A master of using short, precisely timed passes to control the ball in what became known as the West Coast offense, he guided the team to three Super Bowl championships and six NFC West division titles in his 10 years as head coach.
It took more than an innovative offense for Walsh to become one of the most revered figures in Bay Area sports. With his white hair and professorial bearing, he conquered the pro football world with a combination of clever strategy and rugged defense. He was a new, cerebral kind of football coach - he even studied the leadership skills of Civil War and World War II generals. To 49ers fans used to years of losses, near-misses and inopportune fumbles, he was a savior.
The 49ers had been wrecked by mismanagement and unwise personnel decisions under former general manager Joe Thomas when owner Eddie DeBartolo Jr. cleaned house in 1979. Walsh, who had led Stanford to two bowl victories in two seasons as head coach, took a 49ers team that had finished 2-14 in 1978 and built a Super Bowl champion in three years. It was one of the most remarkable turnarounds in professional sports history.
His teams would win two more Super Bowls (following the 1984 and 1988 seasons) before he turned the team over to George Seifert, who directed the 49ers to two more championships (1989 and 1994). Walsh set the foundation for an unprecedented streak in the NFL of 16 consecutive seasons with at least 10 wins.
He had a knack for spotting talent and then developing that talent to its fullest. His touch was particularly deft when it came to quarterbacks. He drafted Joe Montana in the third round in 1979 and acquired Steve Young, then a backup with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, in 1987 for second- and fourth-round draft choices. Both were elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
At his own Hall of Fame induction in Canton, Ohio, in 1993, Walsh revealed he nearly didn't make it to the end of his second season in San Francisco.
"In those first three years, we were trying to find the right formula," he said. "We went 2-14 that first year (1979). The next year we won three and then lost eight in row. I looked out of the window for five hours on the plane ride home from Miami after the eighth straight loss, and I had concluded I wasn't going to make it. I was going to move into management."
He changed his mind and finished the season, a 6-10 year. The 49ers gave notice of things to come in a late-season game against the New Orleans Saints at Candlestick Park. Trailing 35-7 at halftime, they thundered back to win 38-35 in overtime. At the time, it was the biggest comeback in NFL history.
But the real magic was yet to come. After losing two of their first three games in 1981, the 49ers would win 15 of their next 16 in a methodical yet astonishing march. Behind Montana and wide receivers Dwight Clark and Freddy Solomon and a defense led by linebacker Jack "Hacksaw" Reynolds, pass rushing whiz Fred Dean and a secondary that started three rookies - Ronnie Lott, Eric Wright and Carlton Williamson - they became the first NFL team in 34 years to go from the worst record to the best in just three seasons.
To do it, they had to shock the Dallas Cowboys 28-27 in the NFC Championship Game in January 1982. They won it on Montana's scrambling 6-yard pass to a leaping Clark with 51 seconds left. The play, dubbed "The Catch," is the most celebrated moment in Bay Area sports history.
"That was a practiced play," Walsh said. "Now, we didn't expect three guys right down his throat. That was Joe who got the pass off in that situation, putting it where only Clark could come up with it."
Walsh showed his zany side two weeks later in Pontiac, Mich. Arriving before the team, he borrowed a bellman's uniform at the hotel and collected the players' bags at the curb, even holding out his hand for tips. His players didn't immediately recognize him, including Montana, who got into a brief tug-of-war with him when Walsh tried to grab his briefcase.
In Super Bowl XVI, the 49ers built a 20-0 lead but needed a memorable goal-line stand in the fourth quarter to hold off the Cincinnati Bengals and win 26-21.
Pro football in San Francisco would never be the same.
Walsh and his players were stunned by the reception they received when they returned to San Francisco. "There was a suggestion of a parade for us," Walsh said years later, "and I remember thinking that with the general fatigue, I was reluctant to put the players through something that might be just a few people waving handkerchiefs on the street corner."
Instead, the city had basically been shut down for a celebration by more than half a million people, cheering San Francisco's first NFL champions as they were driven down Market Street.
"It was just an overwhelming experience, the realization that millions and millions of people had been following us," Walsh said. "That's when I realized what an accomplishment, what an historic moment for the city, it was to win a professional championship."
The 1984 team was probably Walsh's finest, an 18-1 powerhouse with a record-setting offense and the league's stingiest defense. It pounded Dan Marino and the Miami Dolphins 38-16 in Super Bowl XIX at Stanford Stadium. The following spring, Walsh drafted a receiver from Mississippi Valley State named Jerry Rice, and the offense would get even better.
A last-ditch catch by Rice on a pass from Montana stole a victory over the Bengals in 1987. The play was memorable not only because it won the game but because it prompted a bizarre reaction by the head coach: Walsh joyfully skipped off the field.
One of the most thrilling Super Bowls (XXIII) followed the 1988 season. Rice was voted the game's Most Valuable Player after making 11 catches for a Super Bowl-record 215 yards. But the 49ers needed a 92-yard drive engineered by Montana in the final minutes and a last-minute, 10-yard TD pass from Montana to John Taylor to beat Cincinnati 20-16.
A few minutes later in the locker room, Walsh hugged his son Craig and, to the surprise of others in the raucous celebration, burst into tears. A week later, he revealed why he was so emotional: He had decided he'd had enough earlier that season. He was stepping down. "This is the way most coaches would like to leave the game," he said.
Clearly that last year was a strain on Walsh, who was often at odds with DeBartolo and the media. The team struggled to a 6-5 start that year, and Walsh later said his intensity was waning, partly because he was "weary of the daily press-sparring."
He was ever sensitive to criticism, and said during the playoffs that year, "You become the victim of your success. Everybody expects nothing but wins. They ignore that 27 other franchises have equal desires and opportunities, and that so-called parity gives winning teams tougher schedules and poorer positioning in the draft.
"Owners demand high production. Fans get to where they can't understand why you lost, even if the team makes the playoffs before bowing. And the media, they always want to know how you lost, who screwed up, why it wasn't done differently and every detail about your personal life."
He later second-guessed his decision to step down, telling the San Jose Mercury News in 2002, "I never should have left. I'm still disappointed in myself for not continuing. There's no telling how many Super Bowls we might have won."
In his decade as the 49ers' coach, Walsh won six division titles and had a 102-63-1 record, a mark made even more striking by the fact his teams won only 10 of their first 35 games.
There were bitter disappointments during those years. The 1982 team couldn't handle success, suffered from drug problems and went 3-6 in a strike-shortened season. The 1983 team went to the NFC title game, only to lose at Washington 24-21, in part due to a couple of debatable calls by officials that set up the winning field goal.
Walsh criticized both calls, one of them a pass interference call on Wright. By the rules, if the officials determine that a pass could not have been caught, even without interference, no penalty is called. Walsh protested that the ball "could not have been caught by a 10-foot Boston Celtic."
Before the championship 1988 season, there were three straight years of first-round playoff defeats. Even though the 49ers compiled the NFL's best regular-season record in 1987, their playoff loss caused DeBartolo to strip Walsh of his title of team president. In the ensuing years, Walsh and DeBartolo patched up their differences, and DeBartolo was Walsh's presenter at the Hall of Fame.
He was named the "Coach of the '80s" by the selection committee of the Hall of Fame. His impact on the NFL was evident in the number of his assistants who went on to head coaching jobs, including Seifert, Dennis Green, Mike Holmgren, Ray Rhodes, Sam Wyche, Bruce Coslet, Mike White and Paul Hackett. Those coaches in turn spawned a host of other coaches, all imbued with Walsh's distinctive offensive schemes.
He was an expert in developing quarterbacks, including Ken Anderson, Virgil Carter and Greg Cook with the Bengals, Dan Fouts with the San Diego Chargers, Guy Benjamin and Steve Dils at Stanford and, of course, Montana and Young with the 49ers. He said he looked for resourcefulness, creativity and passing accuracy in his quarterbacks; arm strength was far down the list.
"We spent hours on everything a quarterback does: every step he takes, the number of steps he takes, how he moves between pass rushers or to the outside, when he goes to alternate receivers," he wrote in his 1989 book, "Building a Champion" (with former Chronicle columnist Glenn Dickey). "It's similar to a basketball player practicing different situational shots."
He told an interviewer that the West Coast offense started with the Cincinnati Bengals, where he was quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator under coach Paul Brown from 1968-75. Walsh borrowed on the principles of Sid Gillman, the legendary San Diego coach, and others.
"It was born of an expansion franchise that just didn't have near the talent to compete," he said. "That was probably the worst-stocked franchise in the history of the NFL. ... The best possible way to compete would be a team that could make as many first downs as possible in a contest and control the football.
"We couldn't control the football with the run; teams were just too strong. So it had to be the forward pass, and obviously it had to be a high-percentage, short, controlled passing game. So through a series of formation-changing and timed passes - using all eligible receivers, especially the fullback - we were able to put together an offense and develop it over a period of time."
The West Coast offense meant the ball could be thrown on any down or distance. It meant having the quarterback get rid of the ball quickly, to limit the risk of sacks or turnovers. It didn't mean ignoring the running game, but it could make up for a weak rushing attack. For example, the 49ers' leading rusher in their first championship year was Ricky Patton, who had just 543 yards.
"The old-line NFL people called it a nickel-and-dime offense," Walsh said in his book. "They, in a sense, had disregard and contempt for it, but whenever they played us, they had to deal with it."
Part 2 on next post, the board can only put 20,000 maximum per post.