http://proxy.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=4870096
January 29, 2010
Warner, 2-time MVP, hangs up jersey
Associated Press
TEMPE, Ariz. -- Kurt Warner thanked God, hugged his children and wife and said goodbye to an NFL career that seems the stuff of sports fiction.
The 38-year-old quarterback announced his retirement Friday after a dozen years in a league that at first rejected him, then revered him as he came from nowhere to lead the lowly St. Louis Rams to two Super Bowls.
Then, as if going from stocking groceries to winning NFL MVP awards wasn't improbable enough, Warner was written off as a has-been and rose again to lead the long-suffering Arizona Cardinals to the Super Bowl.
A man of deep faith who carried a Bible to each post-game news conference, Warner walked away with a year left on a two-year, $23 million contract, knowing he still had the skills to play at the highest level.
Hall of Fame worthy?
Is Kurt Warner worthy of the Pro Football Hall of Fame? Warner's postseason numbers are amongst the best ever but his regular-season career has had its peaks and valleys. A look at his career in three different eras, plus his regular and postseason totals:
Years W-L Comp % Yds. Rat.
'98-01 35-8 66.9 12,651 103.0
'02-06 8-23 63.9 7,940 82.1
'07-09 24-18 65.4 11,753 93.6
Total 67-49 65.5 32,344 93.7
Post 9-4 62.8 3,952 102.8
"It's been an amazing ride," Warner said. "I don't think I could have dreamt it would have played out like it has, but I've been humbled every day that I woke up the last 12 years and amazed that God would choose to use me to do what he's given me the opportunity to do."
Warner had one of the greatest postseason performances ever in Arizona's 51-45 overtime wild card victory over Green Bay on Jan. 10, but sustained a brutal hit in the Cardinals' 45-14 divisional round loss at New Orleans six days later.
"He has had a dominant career," Cardinals defensive tackle Darnell Dockett said. "He's got to do what's best for his family. He played long enough. He took us to the Super Bowl last year.
"If you're going to go out, go out on top."
The Cardinals signed Warner to a one-year contract in 2005 largely because no other team would give him a chance to be a starter. His opportunities over the next two years were scattered and even when coach Ken Whisenhunt took over in 2007, Warner was the backup to Matt Leinart.
But when Leinart went down with an injury five games into the season, Warner got his chance. He started 48 of the remaining 49 games of his career.
"I've played 12 years, I'm a 38 years old and I believe I was playing at as high a level now and over the last two years as I was playing when I first got into the league," he said. "That's something I'm proud of."
Blessed with an uncanny throwing accuracy and a knack for reading defenses, Warner leaves the game with a legacy that could land him in the Hall of Fame even though he didn't get his first start until he was 28.
In a comparison with the 14 quarterbacks to make the Hall of Fame in the last 25 years, Warner has a better career completion percentage, yards per pass attempt and yards per game. Only Dan Marino had more career 300-yard passing games.
In 124 regular-season games, Warner completed 65.5 percent of his passes for 32,344 yards and 208 touchdowns. He and Fran Tarkenton are the only NFL quarterbacks to throw for 100 touchdowns and 14,000 yards for two teams.
The Warner file
• Born June 22, 1971 in Burlington, Iowa
• Attended Regis High School in Cedar Rapids, Iowa
• Attended Northern Iowa University
• Originally signed by the Green Bay Packers as an undrafted free agent on April 28, 1994 but was released on Aug. 17, 1994
• Played in Arena Football League with Iowa Barnstormers (1995-97)
• Signed with St. Louis Rams on Dec. 26, 1997 as a free agent
• Played for Amsterdam Admirals of NFL Europe during 1998 season
• Played six seasons with Rams (1998-2003)
• Signed with New York Giants on June 3, 2004 as an unrestricted free agent
• Signed a 1-year contract with the Arizona Cardinals on March 6, 2005
• Signed a 3-year contract with Arizona on Feb. 14, 2006
• Signed a 2-year contract with Arizona on March 4, 2009
Accomplishments
• Four-time Pro Bowl selection (1999, 2000, 2001, 2008)
• Owns Arizona Cardinals regular season records for attempts, completions, completion percentage, passer rating, TD passes and consecutive games with a TD pass
• Two-time NFL MVP (1999 and 2001)
• Super Bowl XXXIV MVP
• Second QB in NFL history to start a Super Bowl for two different teams
• Career passer rating of 93.7 ranks 3rd in NFL history behind only Steve Young (96.8) and Peyton Manning (94.7)
• Became the fastest player in NFL history to reach 10,000 passing yards (36th career game)
• 2008 NFL Man of the Year award winner
For more than 40 minutes, Warner thanked everyone who had helped him along the way, singling out Whisenhunt, for "his willingness to give me an opportunity that I don't know if anyone else would."
Cardinals general manager Rod Graves called it an emotional day "because I realize once again how extraordinary he was."
"I've only had the privilege of being around one other person that I can say was close to him and that was Walter Payton," Graves said. "I think when you have an extraordinary player and one who is just as extraordinary off the field, then you realize you were in the presence of someone special."
Whisenhunt said Warner ranked "at the top" of players he had coached.
"He's one of the best quarterbacks in this league," he said, "and I think it's well noted that he's one of the best people I've been around."
Warner brought his wife, Brenda, and their seven children to the podium, hugging each one of them. He choked up as he thanked them.
"Every day I come home and it doesn't matter if you won or lost or have thrown touchdowns or interceptions, the one thing that I always knew is that when I entered that door, when I stepped in our house, that none of that mattered to these guys," he said. "I can't tell you how much of a blessing that is."
Warner, who grew up in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and played at the University of Northern Iowa, ranks among the career leaders in a variety of passing statistics.
No player in NFL history reached 10,000 yards passing in less games and he tied Marino as fastest to reach 30,000.
He has the top three passing performances in Super Bowl history. His 1,156 yards passing in the 2008 playoffs broke the NFL record of 1,063 he set with St. Louis in 1999.
Cut by Green Bay in training camp, Warner played three seasons in the Arena Football League and one in NFL Europe, mixed in with a stint stocking grocery shelves back in Iowa.
Warner made the Rams as a backup in 1998, then was thrust into the starting role in 1999 when Trent Green was injured.
What followed was a masterful and wholly unexpected season, when he led the Rams to a 13-3 regular-season record, then a Super Bowl triumph over Tennessee. He was the league and Super Bowl MVP.
Warner had the Rams back in the big game in 2001, where "The Greatest Show on Turf" lost a squeaker to New England. That season he earned his second MVP.
But after an injury-plagued 2002 season, he was sacked six times and suffered a concussion in a 2003 season-opening loss to the New York Giants. He never started for St. Louis again.
He signed a free agent contract with the Giants for 2004, but was replaced by rookie Eli Manning after nine games. Warner came to the Cardinals in 2005 and was an off-and-on starter before replacing the injured Leinart part way through the 2007 season.
Warner had to beat out Leinart the following year, then led the Cardinals to the NFC West crown and three playoff victories before the narrow loss to Pittsburgh in last year's Super Bowl, where he threw for 377 yards.
He called that season the crowning achievement of his career.
Warner and his wife operate the First Things First Christian charitable foundation. Last year, he was named the NFL's Man of the Year for his off-field and on-field accomplishments.
"We all learned great lessons from Kurt's humility, dignity and grace. We will forever be thankful for the success he brought us and the unparalleled generosity he has shown the St. Louis community and beyond," Rams owner Chip Rosenbloom said in a statement.
Warner's departure leaves Leinart the presumed replacement. The former Heisman Trophy winner has started 17 games for Arizona but only one in the last two years.
Warner said he plans to spend time watching his children grow up, do some preaching and perhaps get into football broadcasting.
He knows what he wants his legacy to be.
"It's not the way I threw the football, it's not particular games that I won, but that they remember that here's a guy that believed, that worked hard," he said. "Although things didn't always go in his favor, he continued to press through, and with his faith in himself and his faith in God, he was able to accomplish great things."
Showing posts with label Steve Young. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Steve Young. Show all posts
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Brett Favre's daring, dangerous brand of football
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/football/2008-03-04-1901653630_x.htm
Brett Favre's daring, dangerous brand of football
By Dave Goldberg, AP Football Writer
3-4-8
Maybe Brett Favre wasn't the best quarterback in NFL history, although he was pretty close.
There was always a sense of danger - both to his Green Bay Packers and opponents - when Favre dropped back to pass, the ball often held in one hand while dodging defenders. "Gunslinger" was the word many coaches and players used upon hearing of his retirement Tuesday.
"You knew he was having fun when he played, and that made him fun to watch," said Dallas quarterback Tony Romo, who grew up in Wisconsin watching Favre.
Favre would throw across his body or underhanded - left- or right-handed to a receiver. His first completion as a Packer was to himself - deflected off an onrushing lineman.
Even last season, when at age 38 he threw for 4,155 yards and led the Packers to a 13-3 regular season and a berth in the NFC championship game, he could do those things that would make even his most ardent fans cringe.
In a loss to Chicago, Favre threw a game-turning interception that was all too typical: a toss across his body toward the inside of the field instead of out of bounds. It landed in the hands of the Bears' Brian Urlacher.
"I was trying to make something out of nothing," he said at the time, one reason why he retired with the career records both for touchdown passes (442) and interceptions (288).
In fact, his last NFL pass was an interception by the Giants' Corey Webster that set up the winning field goal in the NFC championship game. That sent New York, rather than Favre and the Packers, to the Super Bowl.
Favre played as if he were still a kid. He jumped up and down at a touchdown, hugging teammates. He even honored opponents, as he did in the final minutes of the final game of the 2001 season, taking a dive for Michael Strahan that gave Strahan the single-season sack record.
Most of all, he never forgot that for all the money and the accolades football is just a game.
"I would hope 20, 30 years from now, I'm remembered for something else besides records," Favre told The Associated Press last summer. "Whether I have them or don't have them. If that's the only way I'm remembered, apparently I didn't do something right or leave a good enough impression on the fans. ...
"I've never looked at myself as being a superstar or better than anyone else. Regardless of how much success I've had, it's never - to me, I've always looked at it and I tell some of these guys sometimes, I've always looked at it as such a bonus. I feel like my personality is my personality. Whether it's on the field or off the field, I really feel they're one in the same. To me it's just normal."
Where does Favre fit in history? The records say top 10.
His 253 consecutive starts are a record for quarterbacks - they extend to 275 counting the postseason and his two Super Bowl appearances. Many were played in pain, including a full season with what was probably a broken thumb.
He's also the only player to win three consecutive NFL MVP awards (1995-97). Among his contemporaries in an era of superb QBs, Joe Montana had two straight and so did Peyton Manning. Steve Young and Kurt Warner had two. John Elway won once, Tom Brady won for the first time last season and Troy Aikman had none.
Playing in an era of free agency and a salary cap, Favre never had anything like the crew Montana had with the 49ers team that won four titles between 1981 and 1990. Although he did benefit from the arrival in Green Bay of Reggie White, the first superstar free agent.
But White was defensive end. Favre had a revolving door of receivers: from Sterling Sharpe and Robert Brooks to Antonio Freeman and Mark Chmura through Driver, the best by far of a nondescript crew in the early part of this decade that had him contemplating retirement annually.
The irony of his retirement is that last season's group was the best in a decade: Driver augmented by second-year man Greg Jennings and rookie James Jones.
Back to those rankings: How to compare Favre to a John Unitas, let alone a Sammy Baugh or Sid Luckman from the prehistoric era? How to compare him to Manning or Aikman, straight dropback passers in different offenses? Or to Elway, probably the best athlete to play quarterback?
"You're judged by winning, and (Favre's) won more games than any other quarterback who has ever played," said Denver's Mike Shanahan, Elway's last coach.
The closest to Favre may be Montana and Young. They, like Favre, played in West Coast offenses. Mike Holmgren, Favre's first coach in Green Bay, mentored all three and is a disciple of Bill Walsh, who perfected a system invented by Sid Gillman.
Montana was the purest of the three, accurate to a fraction of an inch on his passes. Young was a scrambler with the skills of a running back. Favre had the strongest arm, but his scrambling was less to run than to escape and find someone to throw to: sidearm, underhand, left-handed, whatever.
But like all of them, he was a competitor most of all.
"Brett's enthusiasm and pure enjoyment of doing what he loved is what we will all remember," Steve Mariucci, one of his first quarterbacks coaches, said Tuesday.
Favre?
"I know when I leave the game, I'm going to miss it. I know that. I'm not going to sit here and say, when I leave, it's over and I felt like I've done everything there is to do," he said last summer. "I feel like I've given every ounce of energy I can give every single time I stepped on the field."
It's the best way to be remembered.
---
AP National Writer Nancy Armour contributed to this report.
Brett Favre's daring, dangerous brand of football
By Dave Goldberg, AP Football Writer
3-4-8
Maybe Brett Favre wasn't the best quarterback in NFL history, although he was pretty close.
There was always a sense of danger - both to his Green Bay Packers and opponents - when Favre dropped back to pass, the ball often held in one hand while dodging defenders. "Gunslinger" was the word many coaches and players used upon hearing of his retirement Tuesday.
"You knew he was having fun when he played, and that made him fun to watch," said Dallas quarterback Tony Romo, who grew up in Wisconsin watching Favre.
Favre would throw across his body or underhanded - left- or right-handed to a receiver. His first completion as a Packer was to himself - deflected off an onrushing lineman.
Even last season, when at age 38 he threw for 4,155 yards and led the Packers to a 13-3 regular season and a berth in the NFC championship game, he could do those things that would make even his most ardent fans cringe.
In a loss to Chicago, Favre threw a game-turning interception that was all too typical: a toss across his body toward the inside of the field instead of out of bounds. It landed in the hands of the Bears' Brian Urlacher.
"I was trying to make something out of nothing," he said at the time, one reason why he retired with the career records both for touchdown passes (442) and interceptions (288).
In fact, his last NFL pass was an interception by the Giants' Corey Webster that set up the winning field goal in the NFC championship game. That sent New York, rather than Favre and the Packers, to the Super Bowl.
Favre played as if he were still a kid. He jumped up and down at a touchdown, hugging teammates. He even honored opponents, as he did in the final minutes of the final game of the 2001 season, taking a dive for Michael Strahan that gave Strahan the single-season sack record.
Most of all, he never forgot that for all the money and the accolades football is just a game.
"I would hope 20, 30 years from now, I'm remembered for something else besides records," Favre told The Associated Press last summer. "Whether I have them or don't have them. If that's the only way I'm remembered, apparently I didn't do something right or leave a good enough impression on the fans. ...
"I've never looked at myself as being a superstar or better than anyone else. Regardless of how much success I've had, it's never - to me, I've always looked at it and I tell some of these guys sometimes, I've always looked at it as such a bonus. I feel like my personality is my personality. Whether it's on the field or off the field, I really feel they're one in the same. To me it's just normal."
Where does Favre fit in history? The records say top 10.
His 253 consecutive starts are a record for quarterbacks - they extend to 275 counting the postseason and his two Super Bowl appearances. Many were played in pain, including a full season with what was probably a broken thumb.
He's also the only player to win three consecutive NFL MVP awards (1995-97). Among his contemporaries in an era of superb QBs, Joe Montana had two straight and so did Peyton Manning. Steve Young and Kurt Warner had two. John Elway won once, Tom Brady won for the first time last season and Troy Aikman had none.
Playing in an era of free agency and a salary cap, Favre never had anything like the crew Montana had with the 49ers team that won four titles between 1981 and 1990. Although he did benefit from the arrival in Green Bay of Reggie White, the first superstar free agent.
But White was defensive end. Favre had a revolving door of receivers: from Sterling Sharpe and Robert Brooks to Antonio Freeman and Mark Chmura through Driver, the best by far of a nondescript crew in the early part of this decade that had him contemplating retirement annually.
The irony of his retirement is that last season's group was the best in a decade: Driver augmented by second-year man Greg Jennings and rookie James Jones.
Back to those rankings: How to compare Favre to a John Unitas, let alone a Sammy Baugh or Sid Luckman from the prehistoric era? How to compare him to Manning or Aikman, straight dropback passers in different offenses? Or to Elway, probably the best athlete to play quarterback?
"You're judged by winning, and (Favre's) won more games than any other quarterback who has ever played," said Denver's Mike Shanahan, Elway's last coach.
The closest to Favre may be Montana and Young. They, like Favre, played in West Coast offenses. Mike Holmgren, Favre's first coach in Green Bay, mentored all three and is a disciple of Bill Walsh, who perfected a system invented by Sid Gillman.
Montana was the purest of the three, accurate to a fraction of an inch on his passes. Young was a scrambler with the skills of a running back. Favre had the strongest arm, but his scrambling was less to run than to escape and find someone to throw to: sidearm, underhand, left-handed, whatever.
But like all of them, he was a competitor most of all.
"Brett's enthusiasm and pure enjoyment of doing what he loved is what we will all remember," Steve Mariucci, one of his first quarterbacks coaches, said Tuesday.
Favre?
"I know when I leave the game, I'm going to miss it. I know that. I'm not going to sit here and say, when I leave, it's over and I felt like I've done everything there is to do," he said last summer. "I feel like I've given every ounce of energy I can give every single time I stepped on the field."
It's the best way to be remembered.
---
AP National Writer Nancy Armour contributed to this report.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Favre throws 421st career TD, surpasses Marino
http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news;_ylt=AnltUz3liPh.wufLpNEwEj9DubYF?slug=ap-favre-tdrecord&prov=ap&type=lgns
Favre throws 421st career TD, surpasses Marino
By JON KRAWCZYNSKI, AP Sports Writer
September 30, 2007
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) -- Brett Favre is No. 1 -- with a bullet.
Favre broke Dan Marino's record for career touchdown passes Sunday, zipping No. 421 to Greg Jennings in the first quarter of the game against the Minnesota Vikings.
He hit Jennings on a 16-yard slant for the score with 4:56 left in the quarter, and like most of his touchdown throws through his brilliant 17-year career, this one had plenty of steam on it.
Ever the jubilant celebrator, Favre sprinted to the end zone and hoisted Jennings on his left shoulder. He joined in hugs with his teammates on the sideline, as thousands of Packers faithful who made the trip from Wisconsin cheered loudly.
Even those dressed in purple stood and applauded when the announcement was made, and a taped message from Marino played on the big screen.
"I loved holding the touchdown record for the past 13 years," Marino said. "But if someone was going to break it, I'm glad it was someone like you, who has always competed at the highest level and always played to win."
It's the latest, and possibly the most hallowed record claimed by the league's last true gunslinger. Two weeks ago, Favre broke John Elway's mark for career victories by a quarterback when he led the Packers to a 35-13 win over the New York Giants.
The soon-to-be 38-year-old also holds the marks for career completions and consecutive starts by a quarterback, which hit 241 Sunday, moving him past former Vikings center Mick Tingelhoff into second place on the list for all players.
Former Vikings defensive end Jim Marshall holds the all-time mark with 270 consecutive starts.
Late in the second quarter, Favre broke another Marino record when he threw the 8,359th pass of his career, and is also within shouting distance of Marino's record for yards passing.
Favre tied Marino's record with three touchdown passes in the Packers' 31-24 victory over San Diego last week, including the record-tying 57-yard completion to Jennings that gave the Packers the lead late in the game.
Marino held the record since 1995, but Favre's reign could be considerably shorter. Old No. 4 has acknowledged that most, if not all, of the records he sets in his career will be challenged very shortly by the Colts' Peyton Manning.
But perhaps even more impressive than the numbers Favre has put up is the manner in which he has done it.
Favre entered the league in a different era, when guys like Marino, Jim Kelly, Warren Moon and Steve Young played the game with an aggressiveness and a swagger that is uncommon among today's quarterbacks.
While offenses have moved away from that mentality more toward "game managers," the league's biggest gambler hasn't let go of his high-risk, high-reward style. That mentality has thrilled fans in Green Bay ever since he first stepped onto the Lambeau Field turf in 1992, but it has also earned him his fair share of criticism over the years.
He has been accused of being careless with the football at times, but Favre will be the last one to apologize for entering the game two interceptions shy of tying George Blanda's career record.
Favre was pressured on his first pass attempt Sunday, and he blindly winged a pass far down field for Jennings that was intercepted by Darren Sharper. But Favre was bailed out by an illegal contact call on Vikings cornerback Antoine Winfield, and the Packers punted four plays later.
After Jeff Dugan fumbled to give the Packers the ball in Minnesota territory, Favre hit Donald Lee on a nice touch pass for 27 yards. Two plays later -- history.
This season, coach Mike McCarthy has reined in Favre a little bit, and it has worked brilliantly so far for the Packers, who started the season 3-0 for the first time since 2001.
And while there is no single record for quarterbacks that carries the significance of Barry Bonds passing Hank Aaron's career home run record, McCarthy said Marino's touchdown mark probably comes closest.
But Favre said he didn't think the touchdown record was getting anywhere near the hype that Bonds' pursuit of Aaron received over the summer. He laughed off any further comparison to Bonds, smiling as he jokingly flexed his forearms to prove he doesn't quite measure up.
AP Sports Writer Chris Jenkins in Green Bay contributed to this story.
Favre throws 421st career TD, surpasses Marino
By JON KRAWCZYNSKI, AP Sports Writer
September 30, 2007
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) -- Brett Favre is No. 1 -- with a bullet.
Favre broke Dan Marino's record for career touchdown passes Sunday, zipping No. 421 to Greg Jennings in the first quarter of the game against the Minnesota Vikings.
He hit Jennings on a 16-yard slant for the score with 4:56 left in the quarter, and like most of his touchdown throws through his brilliant 17-year career, this one had plenty of steam on it.
Ever the jubilant celebrator, Favre sprinted to the end zone and hoisted Jennings on his left shoulder. He joined in hugs with his teammates on the sideline, as thousands of Packers faithful who made the trip from Wisconsin cheered loudly.
Even those dressed in purple stood and applauded when the announcement was made, and a taped message from Marino played on the big screen.
"I loved holding the touchdown record for the past 13 years," Marino said. "But if someone was going to break it, I'm glad it was someone like you, who has always competed at the highest level and always played to win."
It's the latest, and possibly the most hallowed record claimed by the league's last true gunslinger. Two weeks ago, Favre broke John Elway's mark for career victories by a quarterback when he led the Packers to a 35-13 win over the New York Giants.
The soon-to-be 38-year-old also holds the marks for career completions and consecutive starts by a quarterback, which hit 241 Sunday, moving him past former Vikings center Mick Tingelhoff into second place on the list for all players.
Former Vikings defensive end Jim Marshall holds the all-time mark with 270 consecutive starts.
Late in the second quarter, Favre broke another Marino record when he threw the 8,359th pass of his career, and is also within shouting distance of Marino's record for yards passing.
Favre tied Marino's record with three touchdown passes in the Packers' 31-24 victory over San Diego last week, including the record-tying 57-yard completion to Jennings that gave the Packers the lead late in the game.
Marino held the record since 1995, but Favre's reign could be considerably shorter. Old No. 4 has acknowledged that most, if not all, of the records he sets in his career will be challenged very shortly by the Colts' Peyton Manning.
But perhaps even more impressive than the numbers Favre has put up is the manner in which he has done it.
Favre entered the league in a different era, when guys like Marino, Jim Kelly, Warren Moon and Steve Young played the game with an aggressiveness and a swagger that is uncommon among today's quarterbacks.
While offenses have moved away from that mentality more toward "game managers," the league's biggest gambler hasn't let go of his high-risk, high-reward style. That mentality has thrilled fans in Green Bay ever since he first stepped onto the Lambeau Field turf in 1992, but it has also earned him his fair share of criticism over the years.
He has been accused of being careless with the football at times, but Favre will be the last one to apologize for entering the game two interceptions shy of tying George Blanda's career record.
Favre was pressured on his first pass attempt Sunday, and he blindly winged a pass far down field for Jennings that was intercepted by Darren Sharper. But Favre was bailed out by an illegal contact call on Vikings cornerback Antoine Winfield, and the Packers punted four plays later.
After Jeff Dugan fumbled to give the Packers the ball in Minnesota territory, Favre hit Donald Lee on a nice touch pass for 27 yards. Two plays later -- history.
This season, coach Mike McCarthy has reined in Favre a little bit, and it has worked brilliantly so far for the Packers, who started the season 3-0 for the first time since 2001.
And while there is no single record for quarterbacks that carries the significance of Barry Bonds passing Hank Aaron's career home run record, McCarthy said Marino's touchdown mark probably comes closest.
But Favre said he didn't think the touchdown record was getting anywhere near the hype that Bonds' pursuit of Aaron received over the summer. He laughed off any further comparison to Bonds, smiling as he jokingly flexed his forearms to prove he doesn't quite measure up.
AP Sports Writer Chris Jenkins in Green Bay contributed to this story.
Saturday, August 11, 2007
His beautiful game
http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2007/08/07/bill_walsh/
His beautiful game
Bill Walsh transformed football into a work of art, and gave San Francisco a boost when the city needed it most.
By Gary Kamiya
Aug. 07, 2007 Since 1981, there has been one pleasure I have been able to count on every week: Watching the 49ers on Sunday. I have fallen off a bit in these last few years, but over a 20-year stretch, I think I missed only one game.
The true pleasures in life are not always august. In fact, maybe most of them aren't. Alfred Hitchcock's anthologies -- which rejoice in titles like "Happy Deathday!" -- slam Kierkegaard to the turf, and P.G. Wodehouse and Georges Simenon don't even let Robert Musil and Cervantes get off the line of scrimmage. As I get older, and small pleasures can be hard to come by, I value the things that brought me happiness, any kind of happiness, a little more, the way you treasure the memory of a face or a place that you may not see again.
And so when I heard the news July 30 that Bill Walsh had died, those decades of winning Sundays came back to me, long vanished but still buzzing with excitement, like the sound of a big crowd as you approach the stadium. Those Sundays were a gift that I and thousands of other San Franciscans will never forget. And Bill Walsh was the man who gave us that gift. Actually, two gifts: He gave us championships, and he gave us a special style of football. Call it the beautiful game.
The beautiful game, o jogo bonito, refers to the unique flair of Brazilian soccer -- graceful, flowing, with velvety, uncannily accurate one-touch passes. The Brazilians, at their best, seem to samba down the field, barely touching the ground. American football, too, had its version of the beautiful game. Bill Walsh created it, his players executed it, and no one could stop it. The result was a kind of football never seen: beautiful football, football as a work of art.
There are certain times when a sports team captures something essential about its city. You think of the swagger of the New York Yankees. The blue-collar grit of the Pittsburgh Steelers. The flash and dazzle of the Los Angeles Lakers. Walsh's 49ers mirrored their city, too, but in perhaps the most unlikely way of all. The qualities San Francisco is famous for -- beauty, sophistication, intellectuality, artistry, eccentricity, hipness -- are the last ones you would think would translate into success on the football field, that arena of blood and sweat and mayhem. But Walsh succeeded in forging a team that not only exemplified those qualities, but kicked the league's ass while doing it. The city of "slim, swivelling hips," as Chicago newsman Mike Royko once derisively called San Francisco, smashed its way into football immortality.
Throwing out the strike-shortened 1982 season, the 49ers won an average of almost 12 games a year in the 18-year period between 1981 to 1998 -- a period of sustained excellence unmatched in the post-AFL-merger era. They won five Super Bowls in 14 years, the most of any team in that period of time, and came within two plays (a ludicrous pass-interference call on Eric Wright against the Redskins and a last-minute Roger Craig fumble against the Giants, both of which are still seared into my memory) of going to two more. Perhaps the most amazing statistic is this one: Between 1981 and 1989, the 49ers had a better regular-season record on the road than any other team in the NFL had at home.
But the numbers don't tell the whole story. For that, we have to go to the cold, clear, chess-grandmaster brain of Bill Walsh. And the players whose talent he recognized, and who he fit into his system the way Miles Davis fit Herbie Hancock and Ron Carter and Wayne Shorter and Tony Williams into his second quintet. The comparison to soccer and jazz isn't accidental. Because the real innovation Walsh brought to pro football was controlled improvisation.
Walsh didn't invent the so-called West Coast offense by himself. As my colleague King Kaufman has pointed out, he built on the concepts of Sid Gillman, the great passing-offense genius from the early AFL days. He was also indebted to Don Coryell, who, like Gillman, coached the San Diego Chargers, and the legendary Paul Brown -- both major innovators in opening up the passing game. However, it was under Walsh that the West Coast offense came to fruition and revolutionized the game.
Gillman and Coryell pioneered the concept of using the pass to set up the run, making running backs and tight ends as well as wide receivers key parts of the passing game. They favored precise pass routes in which the quarterback's footwork was timed to the pattern. For the system to succeed, the quarterback had to make a succession of quick "reads" and hit the open receiver. Walsh kept those elements, but brought in two new ones that proved decisive. More than anyone before him, he emphasized the short or "horizontal" passing game, using quick slants and curls run by backs, frustrating a defense by hitting it underneath the coverage or in its seams again and again, picking up six or eight or 12 yards as easily as more plodding teams picked up three or four on off-tackle running plays. And he pioneered the use of option routes, in which his receivers were given the freedom to change their patterns in precise ways, depending on where the defense lined up.
Walsh's intricate system was enormously challenging for the quarterback, who not only had to go through his reads in a second or two with 300-pound defensive linemen barreling in on him, not only had to know where as many as five receivers might be at any given moment, but also had to know where those receivers would be if they changed their routes. Could Walsh find players to make it work? He drafted a skinny kid named Joe Montana out of Notre Dame, who many scouts thought lacked the arm strength to play in the NFL, and later picked up a USFL retread named Steve Young. Walsh also saw something in a young receiver out of tiny Mississippi Valley State named Jerry Rice, who was ignored by many NFL teams because he had only run a 4.7 in the 40.
It turned out that the skinny quarterback from Notre Dame had something that the scouts couldn't measure: an unflappable poise and a killer instinct. The USFL retread turned out to be a quarterback so electrifying in his combination of speed and accuracy that, as Atlanta defensive end Tim Green once told me, his coaches warned the defense not to knock Montana out of the game, because they didn't want to face Young. And Jerry Rice, despite only clocking a 4.7, turned out to have something they call "football speed" -- a gear fast enough to let him run all the way to the Hall of Fame, and be almost universally recognized as the greatest wide receiver of all time.
When Walsh's former players paid tribute to him after his passing, their most moving words concerned Walsh's belief in them. Young said, "Bill was blessed with one of the greatest gifts you can have, which is the ability to see the future potential of another human being." Dwight Clark, whose "Catch" in 1981 started the 49ers' epic run, said, "He was a guy who believed in me before I believed in me." Rice simply said, "I came to San Francisco, and I found another father, Bill Walsh."
The 49ers always had great athletes -- Rice and Young (who may have been even faster than Rice), and Roger Craig, the superb all-purpose back who was seemingly created to play in Walsh's system. But what made Walsh's offense so gorgeous was its precision, born of hundreds of repetitions in practice, and its analytical sophistication. Just when you knew the swing pass to the back would work, Walsh would call it. Just when the linebackers came up, the tight end would go deep over the middle. Watching Walsh's team run his first 25 scripted plays -- he was the first coach to do that -- was like watching a game of scissors, paper, rock. Walsh always seemed to guess right.
Walsh not only wanted to win, he wanted to win his way -- in style. Mike Holmgren, one of the many Walsh assistants who went on to great success in the league, said, "I always said that he was an artist and all the rest of us were blacksmiths pounding the anvil while he was painting the picture." But it was perhaps linebacker Keena Turner who best captured the essence of Walsh's unique approach. "When writing his script, he didn't believe that running the football was the way to get there," Turner said. "It had to be prettier than that -- beautiful in some way."
The true testament to Walsh's genius is that he made the brutal sport of football a sweet science, like boxing. Detractors dismissed the 49ers as a "finesse" team, an insult that is actually the highest of compliments: To execute something with finesse in football is incredibly difficult. In fact, it's remarkable that any coherent style at all, let alone one that can be called beautiful, can emerge from a game as savagely physical as football. But under Walsh, the 49ers had style to burn.
So did Walsh. With his white hair and professorial mien, always seeming to be deep in abstruse thought on the sideline, he was the perfect leader for his team. His image exemplified the triumph of brain over brawn. That was true in a way, but it was also misleading. The 49ers never lacked brawn: Their ferocious defense, led by the one-man wrecking crew Ronnie Lott, was as responsible for their success as their storied offense. As for Walsh, he wasn't just an artist with a chalkboard, but a fierce competitor and a tough, no-nonsense man who was famous for letting even his most beloved players go when he thought they were through. Like most great coaches, Walsh was a complex human being, not entirely readable to his players when he was coaching them. Coaches usually need to keep a certain distance from their players, even if they're friendly with them. But unlike some coaches, he turned out to be as fine a friend and mentor to his players after he left the field as he had been a coach on it. In one of many emotional tributes his former players paid to Walsh, Turner said, "I never saw him turn a guy down for support in those years after retirement."
Walsh did it his way, and his way happened to reflect the qualities his city most cherished in itself. But above all, he won. And by winning, he gave the city an enormous boost when it needed it most. In 1981, San Francisco was still reeling from double tragedies that had struck in 1978: the Jonestown massacre and the murder of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk by Dan White. When the 49ers won their first Super Bowl, the city finally had something to cheer about. And as the years went on, we kept on cheering.
We were blessed all those years, and we knew it. We were spoiled, and we knew it. We knew it was too good to be true. We kept waiting for it to end, and were overjoyed and amazed that it didn't. Now it has ended, with a thud. And now that the 49ers have fallen on hard times, along with the rest of the teams in the Bay Area, and we realize how damn hard it is just to get to .500, that whole endless time of winning seems even more miraculous.
Yet the team that Walsh built is inscribed in the city's DNA forever, like the cable cars and "Howl" and the Grateful Dead and Herb Caen.
It's 1989, and the 49ers are playing in their third Super Bowl. It's Bill Walsh's last game. I'm watching it with my friend Mark, with whom I've watched almost every game for eight years. The 49ers are losing. Montana is leading them down the field but there's only a minute left, and it's second-and-20. This is it. As Montana drops back, I feel a strange kind of time-stopping heartache I haven't felt since I was a kid, the pain of having bought into a team all the way. You have to earn that kind of pain with years of loyalty. And then Jerry snatches the ball out of the air 27 yards down the field, and a few plays later John Taylor runs one of Walsh's trademark routes, a skinny post, and Montana hits him with the winning touchdown, and that pain is gone, and it's one pain that never comes back, it's gone for good, and we're all roaring and through the open window you can hear people shouting down the street too, and all across the city the cries are echoing off the roofs.
-- By Gary Kamiya
His beautiful game
Bill Walsh transformed football into a work of art, and gave San Francisco a boost when the city needed it most.
By Gary Kamiya
Aug. 07, 2007 Since 1981, there has been one pleasure I have been able to count on every week: Watching the 49ers on Sunday. I have fallen off a bit in these last few years, but over a 20-year stretch, I think I missed only one game.
The true pleasures in life are not always august. In fact, maybe most of them aren't. Alfred Hitchcock's anthologies -- which rejoice in titles like "Happy Deathday!" -- slam Kierkegaard to the turf, and P.G. Wodehouse and Georges Simenon don't even let Robert Musil and Cervantes get off the line of scrimmage. As I get older, and small pleasures can be hard to come by, I value the things that brought me happiness, any kind of happiness, a little more, the way you treasure the memory of a face or a place that you may not see again.
And so when I heard the news July 30 that Bill Walsh had died, those decades of winning Sundays came back to me, long vanished but still buzzing with excitement, like the sound of a big crowd as you approach the stadium. Those Sundays were a gift that I and thousands of other San Franciscans will never forget. And Bill Walsh was the man who gave us that gift. Actually, two gifts: He gave us championships, and he gave us a special style of football. Call it the beautiful game.
The beautiful game, o jogo bonito, refers to the unique flair of Brazilian soccer -- graceful, flowing, with velvety, uncannily accurate one-touch passes. The Brazilians, at their best, seem to samba down the field, barely touching the ground. American football, too, had its version of the beautiful game. Bill Walsh created it, his players executed it, and no one could stop it. The result was a kind of football never seen: beautiful football, football as a work of art.
There are certain times when a sports team captures something essential about its city. You think of the swagger of the New York Yankees. The blue-collar grit of the Pittsburgh Steelers. The flash and dazzle of the Los Angeles Lakers. Walsh's 49ers mirrored their city, too, but in perhaps the most unlikely way of all. The qualities San Francisco is famous for -- beauty, sophistication, intellectuality, artistry, eccentricity, hipness -- are the last ones you would think would translate into success on the football field, that arena of blood and sweat and mayhem. But Walsh succeeded in forging a team that not only exemplified those qualities, but kicked the league's ass while doing it. The city of "slim, swivelling hips," as Chicago newsman Mike Royko once derisively called San Francisco, smashed its way into football immortality.
Throwing out the strike-shortened 1982 season, the 49ers won an average of almost 12 games a year in the 18-year period between 1981 to 1998 -- a period of sustained excellence unmatched in the post-AFL-merger era. They won five Super Bowls in 14 years, the most of any team in that period of time, and came within two plays (a ludicrous pass-interference call on Eric Wright against the Redskins and a last-minute Roger Craig fumble against the Giants, both of which are still seared into my memory) of going to two more. Perhaps the most amazing statistic is this one: Between 1981 and 1989, the 49ers had a better regular-season record on the road than any other team in the NFL had at home.
But the numbers don't tell the whole story. For that, we have to go to the cold, clear, chess-grandmaster brain of Bill Walsh. And the players whose talent he recognized, and who he fit into his system the way Miles Davis fit Herbie Hancock and Ron Carter and Wayne Shorter and Tony Williams into his second quintet. The comparison to soccer and jazz isn't accidental. Because the real innovation Walsh brought to pro football was controlled improvisation.
Walsh didn't invent the so-called West Coast offense by himself. As my colleague King Kaufman has pointed out, he built on the concepts of Sid Gillman, the great passing-offense genius from the early AFL days. He was also indebted to Don Coryell, who, like Gillman, coached the San Diego Chargers, and the legendary Paul Brown -- both major innovators in opening up the passing game. However, it was under Walsh that the West Coast offense came to fruition and revolutionized the game.
Gillman and Coryell pioneered the concept of using the pass to set up the run, making running backs and tight ends as well as wide receivers key parts of the passing game. They favored precise pass routes in which the quarterback's footwork was timed to the pattern. For the system to succeed, the quarterback had to make a succession of quick "reads" and hit the open receiver. Walsh kept those elements, but brought in two new ones that proved decisive. More than anyone before him, he emphasized the short or "horizontal" passing game, using quick slants and curls run by backs, frustrating a defense by hitting it underneath the coverage or in its seams again and again, picking up six or eight or 12 yards as easily as more plodding teams picked up three or four on off-tackle running plays. And he pioneered the use of option routes, in which his receivers were given the freedom to change their patterns in precise ways, depending on where the defense lined up.
Walsh's intricate system was enormously challenging for the quarterback, who not only had to go through his reads in a second or two with 300-pound defensive linemen barreling in on him, not only had to know where as many as five receivers might be at any given moment, but also had to know where those receivers would be if they changed their routes. Could Walsh find players to make it work? He drafted a skinny kid named Joe Montana out of Notre Dame, who many scouts thought lacked the arm strength to play in the NFL, and later picked up a USFL retread named Steve Young. Walsh also saw something in a young receiver out of tiny Mississippi Valley State named Jerry Rice, who was ignored by many NFL teams because he had only run a 4.7 in the 40.
It turned out that the skinny quarterback from Notre Dame had something that the scouts couldn't measure: an unflappable poise and a killer instinct. The USFL retread turned out to be a quarterback so electrifying in his combination of speed and accuracy that, as Atlanta defensive end Tim Green once told me, his coaches warned the defense not to knock Montana out of the game, because they didn't want to face Young. And Jerry Rice, despite only clocking a 4.7, turned out to have something they call "football speed" -- a gear fast enough to let him run all the way to the Hall of Fame, and be almost universally recognized as the greatest wide receiver of all time.
When Walsh's former players paid tribute to him after his passing, their most moving words concerned Walsh's belief in them. Young said, "Bill was blessed with one of the greatest gifts you can have, which is the ability to see the future potential of another human being." Dwight Clark, whose "Catch" in 1981 started the 49ers' epic run, said, "He was a guy who believed in me before I believed in me." Rice simply said, "I came to San Francisco, and I found another father, Bill Walsh."
The 49ers always had great athletes -- Rice and Young (who may have been even faster than Rice), and Roger Craig, the superb all-purpose back who was seemingly created to play in Walsh's system. But what made Walsh's offense so gorgeous was its precision, born of hundreds of repetitions in practice, and its analytical sophistication. Just when you knew the swing pass to the back would work, Walsh would call it. Just when the linebackers came up, the tight end would go deep over the middle. Watching Walsh's team run his first 25 scripted plays -- he was the first coach to do that -- was like watching a game of scissors, paper, rock. Walsh always seemed to guess right.
Walsh not only wanted to win, he wanted to win his way -- in style. Mike Holmgren, one of the many Walsh assistants who went on to great success in the league, said, "I always said that he was an artist and all the rest of us were blacksmiths pounding the anvil while he was painting the picture." But it was perhaps linebacker Keena Turner who best captured the essence of Walsh's unique approach. "When writing his script, he didn't believe that running the football was the way to get there," Turner said. "It had to be prettier than that -- beautiful in some way."
The true testament to Walsh's genius is that he made the brutal sport of football a sweet science, like boxing. Detractors dismissed the 49ers as a "finesse" team, an insult that is actually the highest of compliments: To execute something with finesse in football is incredibly difficult. In fact, it's remarkable that any coherent style at all, let alone one that can be called beautiful, can emerge from a game as savagely physical as football. But under Walsh, the 49ers had style to burn.
So did Walsh. With his white hair and professorial mien, always seeming to be deep in abstruse thought on the sideline, he was the perfect leader for his team. His image exemplified the triumph of brain over brawn. That was true in a way, but it was also misleading. The 49ers never lacked brawn: Their ferocious defense, led by the one-man wrecking crew Ronnie Lott, was as responsible for their success as their storied offense. As for Walsh, he wasn't just an artist with a chalkboard, but a fierce competitor and a tough, no-nonsense man who was famous for letting even his most beloved players go when he thought they were through. Like most great coaches, Walsh was a complex human being, not entirely readable to his players when he was coaching them. Coaches usually need to keep a certain distance from their players, even if they're friendly with them. But unlike some coaches, he turned out to be as fine a friend and mentor to his players after he left the field as he had been a coach on it. In one of many emotional tributes his former players paid to Walsh, Turner said, "I never saw him turn a guy down for support in those years after retirement."
Walsh did it his way, and his way happened to reflect the qualities his city most cherished in itself. But above all, he won. And by winning, he gave the city an enormous boost when it needed it most. In 1981, San Francisco was still reeling from double tragedies that had struck in 1978: the Jonestown massacre and the murder of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk by Dan White. When the 49ers won their first Super Bowl, the city finally had something to cheer about. And as the years went on, we kept on cheering.
We were blessed all those years, and we knew it. We were spoiled, and we knew it. We knew it was too good to be true. We kept waiting for it to end, and were overjoyed and amazed that it didn't. Now it has ended, with a thud. And now that the 49ers have fallen on hard times, along with the rest of the teams in the Bay Area, and we realize how damn hard it is just to get to .500, that whole endless time of winning seems even more miraculous.
Yet the team that Walsh built is inscribed in the city's DNA forever, like the cable cars and "Howl" and the Grateful Dead and Herb Caen.
It's 1989, and the 49ers are playing in their third Super Bowl. It's Bill Walsh's last game. I'm watching it with my friend Mark, with whom I've watched almost every game for eight years. The 49ers are losing. Montana is leading them down the field but there's only a minute left, and it's second-and-20. This is it. As Montana drops back, I feel a strange kind of time-stopping heartache I haven't felt since I was a kid, the pain of having bought into a team all the way. You have to earn that kind of pain with years of loyalty. And then Jerry snatches the ball out of the air 27 yards down the field, and a few plays later John Taylor runs one of Walsh's trademark routes, a skinny post, and Montana hits him with the winning touchdown, and that pain is gone, and it's one pain that never comes back, it's gone for good, and we're all roaring and through the open window you can hear people shouting down the street too, and all across the city the cries are echoing off the roofs.
-- By Gary Kamiya
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