Bill Walsh, the architest of the San Francisco 49ers dynasty, died today after a long battle with leukemia, aged 75. Other media can handle this better and maybe it should wait for Up at 6, but if you don't mind, here's five favourite items about Bill Walsh, who if wasn't the greatest coach in NFL history, certainly was the most influential:
- The anecdote stemming from his second stint at Stanford, when he told his assistants during practice to, "Stop yelling, and start teaching." It was somewhat image, but he came off like a professor coaching football.
- His best work in the pros might have come before the 49ers. As Michael Lewis puts it in his book The Blind Side, when Walsh joined the expansion Cincinnati Bengals as an offensive assistant coach in 1968, he had a quarterback, Virgil Carter, who couldn't "get the ball more than 20 yards downfield in any form but a slow desperate wobble."
Thus the West Coast offence -- short, precise passes, "long handoffs" that got the ball to a runner on the other side of the line of scrimmage -- was born out of necessity. The Bengals went from AFL expansion outfit to a division champion in the NFL in just three years.
As Lewis notes, from the time Walsh joined the 49ers to the time the franchise won its last Super Bowl, NFL teams went from running the ball three out of every five plays to thorwing it three out of every five. The 60/40 ratio had completely inverted. - Forget Joe Montana and Steve Young, consider this: Journeymen such as Jeff Kemp and Steve Bono were top-rated NFL passers playing for the 49ers. Kemp averaged almost eight yards per pass and completed close to 60 per cent of his attempts in his one season filling for in Montana. In nine other seasons, Kemp averaged 6.5 yards and was barely a 50 per cent passer.
- That he didn't get to be a NFL head coach until his late 40s. The genius was always there, but it takes a long time for some people to see it.
- That Walsh's 1984 Niners put the lie to two beliefs that are almost unshakable among sports fans born after 1972: That Don Shula, winningest coach in NFL history, is thus the best ever and that the 1985 Chicago Bears who went 18-1 (as did the '84 Niners) were the best team ever.
In '84, Walsh's Niners made easy work of what was pretty much the same Bears team in the NFC title game, 23 to nothing. Two weeks later, San Fran blew out Shula's Miami Dolphins in the Super Bowl, 38-16. If Shula was so good, shouldn't he have found a way to keep within three touchdowns that day?
In Walsh's last Super Bowl season, 1988, it was Bears-49ers for the NFC title again, this time on a frozen field in Chicago. The team from California won 28-3. Granted, the Bears of that era were untouchable in '85, but shouldn't that single-season greatness have spilled over into actually scoring a touchdown in a big game in other years? - The fact Marv Levy gave Walsh his first crack at the big time -- defensive co-ordinator at Cal in 1960 -- and that Marv Levy is still involved in football 47 years later.
Related:
Former 49er head coach Bill Walsh dies (Tim FitzGerald, San Francisco Chronicle)
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2 comments:
Something that was left out of a couple obit pieces I saw on the late sportscast was Walsh's influence on the Bills' K-Gun offence. In The Blind Side, former Bills GM Bill Polian said he had a "Eureka moment" watching film of the Niners in the '80s and decided that was going to be be his team's offence.
Of course, Polian later took that approach to the Colts and they finally won that franchise's first Super Bowl in Indy last season.
Have you seen the Bill Walsh coaching tree? It is quite something -- fully half of the current NFL head coaches are offshoots of the Walsh coaching legacy, along with almost a dozen former head coaches.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d9/Walsh_Coaching_Tree3.GIF
To me, Walsh is the most influential coach in history, far more important to the development of the game than Lombardi ever was. Lombardi was very successful, of course, but he didn't change the game. Not only did Walsh revolutionize the way the game was played, he also changed the way it was coached, proving that you didn't have to be a screaming, abusive dictator in order to succeed in the NFL.
I was fortunate enough to hear Walsh at a coaching clinic in 1995. My wife can tell you all about it -- I was up and out of my hotel room at 7 AM to make sure I had a good seat for the 8 AM lecture. It's an experience I'll always remember.
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