Bill Walsh (American football coach)
Bill Walsh (born November 30, 1931) is a former American football head coach of the San Francisco 49ers and Stanford University. The inventor of the West Coast Offense, he is widely considered one of the most brilliant and innovative football minds to ever coach. He has a home in Pacific Grove, California.
Early career
Walsh started his career at Chatham Glenwood High School under the famed legend of high school lure Dan Rourke. Walsh attended San José State University in San José, California, where he was a winning collegiate boxer. His first coaching appointment was with Washington High School in Fremont, California. He then served as an assistant coach in college football, first under Marv Levy at the University of California, Berkeley, then with John Ralston at Stanford.
NFL assistant coach
Walsh began his pro coaching career in 1966 as an assistant with the Oakland Raiders. As a Raider assistant, Walsh was groomed in the vertical passing offense of Sid Gillman favored by Al Davis. Walsh would later modify his own offensive philosophy to favor a predominantly horizontal passing approach.
He then moved to the expansion Cincinnati Bengals in 1968, serving under Paul Brown for seven seasons as one of the architects of the team's offense, built around quarterback Ken Anderson and wide receiver Isaac Curtis.
When Brown retired as head coach following the 1975 season and appointed Bill "Tiger" Johnson as his successor, Walsh resigned and served as an assistant coach for Tommy Prothro with the San Diego Chargers in 1976. In a 2006 interview[1] , Walsh claimed that during his tenure with the Bengals, Brown "worked against my candidacy" to be a head coach anywhere in the league. "All the way through I had opportunities, and I never knew about them," Walsh said. "And then when I left him, he called whoever he thought was necessary to keep me out of the NFL."
Head coach at Stanford
Walsh then moved for the first of two tenures as head football coach at Stanford, from 1977 to 1978, where Quarterbacks Guy Benjamin and Steve Dils played on the teams he coached.
NFL Head Coach
In 1979, Walsh was appointed head coach of the San Francisco 49ers, and under him the 49ers won Super Bowl championships in 1981, 1984 and 1988. Walsh served as 49ers head coach for 10 years and during his tenure he and his coaching staff perfected the style of play known popularly as the West Coast offense.
He was responsible for drafting Joe Montana, Ronnie Lott, Charles Haley, and Jerry Rice. Walsh's successes with the 49ers were rewarded when he was elected to the Professional Football Hall of Fame in 1993.
1981 championship
The 1981 season saw Walsh lead the 49ers to a championship and marked the team's rise from the bottom of the NFL. Important in that season were two wins each over the Los Angeles Rams and the Dallas Cowboys. The Rams had dominated the series with the 49ers up to that point in time, and the 49ers two wins over the Rams in 1981 marked the beginning of a long run of dominance for the 49ers in the series that lasted until the late 1990s.
In 1981 the 49ers blew out the Cowboys in the regular season. On Monday Night Football that week, the 49ers' win was not included in the halftime highlights. Walsh felt that this was because the Cowboys were scheduled to play the Rams the next week in a rare Sunday night game and that showing the highlights of the 49ers' win would potentially hurt the game's ratings. Walsh used this as a motivating factor for his team.
The 49ers faced the Cowboys again that same season in the NFC title game. The game was very close, and in the fourth quarter Walsh called a series of running plays as the 49ers marched down the field against the Cowboys defense, which had been expecting the 49ers to mainly pass. The 49ers came from behind to win the game on Dwight Clark's memorable TD reception (The Catch), propelling Walsh to his first Super Bowl. Walsh and the 49ers defeated Cincinnati in the title game, which was played in Detroit. Walsh would later write that the 49ers' two wins over the Rams showed a shift of power in their division, while the wins over the Cowboys showed a shift of power in the conference.
Prominent assistant coaches
Many of his assistant coaches went on to be head coaches, including George Seifert, Mike Holmgren, Mike Shanahan, Ray Rhodes, and Dennis Green. These coaches in turn have their own disciples who have utilized Walsh's West Coast system. Bill has been a strong advocate for African-American head coaches in the NFL and NCAA [2]. Along with Rhodes and Green, Tyrone Willingham became the head coach at Stanford, then later Notre Dame and Washington. One of Mike Shanahan's assistants, Karl Dorrell has gone on to be the head coach at UCLA. Walsh directly helped propel Dennis Green into the NFL head coaching ranks by offering to take on the head coaching job at Stanford.
Bill Walsh Coaching Tree
Several former and current NFL Head Coaches trace their lineage back to Bill Walsh on his Coaching tree:
Len Pasquarelli article on ESPN.com
Return to Stanford
After leaving the coaching ranks immediately following his team's victory in Super Bowl XXIII, Bill went to work as a broadcaster for NBC. Walsh returned to Stanford in 1992 to once again serve as head coach for the school, defeating Notre Dame in his first season but leaving in 1994 after consecutive losing seasons.
NFL Front Office
Walsh would also return to the 49ers, serving as Vice President and General Manager from 1999 to 2001 and was a special consultant to the team for three years afterwards.
Stanford Athletic director
In 2004, Walsh was appointed as special assistant to the athletic director at Stanford. In 2005, after then-athletic director Ted Leland stepped down to take a position at the University of the Pacific, Walsh was named interim athletic director.
Author/Speaker
Bill Walsh is also the author of several books, is active as a motivational speaker, and taught classes at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Bill Walsh can currently be seen in the new Coors Light commercials. He plays the role of a coach who answers questions about football. Coors light drinking fans ask him questions saying things such as "We have a 12 pack and four cans" to which Walsh replies "Well 12 and 4 is pretty good.."
Leukemia
He has recently confirmed that he is undergoing treatment for leukemia. "News about me has been circulating," he said. "It's been getting back to me. The media has been aware of the possibility of this and has refrained from writing.
"There are too many people following the progress of this. I felt it was appropriate to confirm what's happening. I hope now that I have done that, the media will refrain from phoning me.
"I'm pragmatically doing everything my physicians recommend and I'm working my way through it," Walsh said.[3]
Dick Enberg has reported that Bill Walsh told him the cancer is currently in remission. [4]
See also
References
- ^
Sam Farmer (Dec 22, 2006, D.1). Living Legend. Los Angeles Times.
{{cite book}}: Check date values in:|year=(help) - ^ http://archive.profootballweekly.com/content/archives2001/features_2001/dickey_011402.asp
- ^ http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061110/sp_nm/nfl_walsh_leukemia_dc
- ^ http://www.mercextra.com/blogs/buzz/2007/02/04/encouraging-signs-from-bill-walsh/
External links
- Pro Football Hall of Fame: member biography
- Bill Walsh Tribute On 49ers Paradise
- Cincinnati Bengals coaches
- San Diego Chargers coaches
- Stanford Cardinal football coaches
- Cal Bears football coaches
- San Jose State Spartans football coaches
- Oakland Raiders coaches
- San Francisco 49ers coaches
- National Football League announcers
- American football executives
- People from the San Francisco Bay Area
- Irish-American sportspeople
- American non-fiction writers
- Pro Football Hall of Fame
- Stanford Athletic Hall of Fame
- 1931 births
- Living people
- NFL 1980s All-Decade Team