Sure, they excluded Joe Cool himself, Joe Montana, and there's some other notable snubs: Rickey Henderson in baseball, Bird, Magic and Kareem in basketball, and John McEnroe and Andre Aggasi in tennis. Still, Gentleman's Quarterly does a great job listing the 25 coolest athletes of all time:
Muhammad Ali
Mario Andretti
Arthur Ashe
George Best
Bjorn Borg
Tom Brady
Jim Brown
Julius Erving
Walt Frazier
Bob Gibson
Allen Iverson
Bo Jackson
Michael Jordan
Jean-Claude Killy
Evel Knievel
Tim Lincecum
Pete Maravich
Joe Namath
Arnold Palmer
Pelé
Gary Player
Derek Sanderson
Kelly Slater
Ken Stabler
Ted Turner
Showing posts with label Joe Montana. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Joe Montana. Show all posts
Thursday, February 10, 2011
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.
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
Monday, August 6, 2007
Football legend Bill Walsh dies at 75
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_6500470?source=most_viewed
Football legend Bill Walsh dies at 75
By Daniel Brown and Dennis Georgatos
Mercury News
San Jose Mercury News
07/30/2007
Bill Walsh, the brilliant coach who launched the 49ers dynasty and forever transformed the football landscape, died at his Woodside home Monday morning after a battle with leukemia. He was 75.
Walsh, perhaps the most influential strategist in NFL history, popularized and perfected the "West Coast offense" that paved the way for five 49ers Super Bowl victories. His innovations also propelled players such as Joe Montana toward the Hall of Fame and provided an oft-copied blueprint for coaches at every level.
Walsh died peacefully at 10:45 a.m. with his family by his side, according to family spokesman Kirk Reynolds. Walsh is survived by his wife, Geri; his daughter, Elizabeth; and his son, Craig. A second son, Steve, died of leukemia in 2002.
"This is just a tremendous loss for all of us, especially to the Bay Area because of what he meant to the 49ers," Montana told the Associated Press. "For me personally, outside of my dad he was probably the most influential person in my life. I am going to miss him."
Walsh was social until the end, Reynolds said. Sunday, former Stanford Coach Tyrone Willingham presented Walsh with the Amos Alonzo Stagg Award, courtesy of the American Football Coaches Association, for his contributions to the game. John Madden and Al Davis visited with Walsh on Saturday.
Joe Montana and Ronnie Lott paid Walsh a visit Wednesday. San Jose State President Don Kassing and athletic director Tom Bowen saw him Friday.
"We went to say goodbye," SJSU's Kassing said. "It was terribly sad, but Bill said, `Hey, Don, come over here.' I felt very priviledged to know him and have a chance to see him last week."
Walsh went 102-63-1 in 10 seasons with the 49ers and led the team to Super Bowl victories in the 1981, 1984 and 1988 seasons. He also left behind the framework for the '89 and '94 title teams.
"The secret was not only the fact that the team was victorious, but also the way it went about winning and handling the wins," Carmen Policy, the 49ers president during Walsh's glory years, said recently. "The team became a virtual bridge that linked the entire Bay Area into one community and all of the components of that community into one citizenry."
Along the way, Walsh mentored dozens of men who went on to be NFL coaches, and he later served as a major force in shaping the athletic departments of San Jose State and Stanford.
"Bill could have run Google or Microsoft," said Brent Jones, a 49ers tight end in 1987-97. "He was not happy with good, or very good, it had to be excellent at all times. He did that in his approach to coaching, design of plays and in his personnel."
Hired by desperate owner Eddie DeBartolo Jr. in 1979 and charged with turning around a moribund franchise, Walsh promptly laid the groundwork for one of the most successful stretches in sports history. His teams won six NFC West titles, won at least 10 games in seven of his final eight seasons and set a standard in which anything less than a Super Bowl was a crushing disappointment.
Walsh, who looked like a professor, was frequently portrayed as an egghead. As the late Jim Murray, the legendary Los Angeles Times columnist once wrote: "You half expect his headset is playing Mozart."
There was an element of truth to the depiction, as Walsh's wizardry at the chalkboard earned him the nickname "The Genius."
But the coach bristled at the stereotype; he was no wimpy intellectual. Walsh fought as a heavyweight in college - and later used boxing psychology in his tactics - and was unafraid of berating a burly lineman for a mistake. Walsh may have looked refined, though at times his language was anything but formal.
"It was spicy. Very spicy," former lineman Randy Cross said.
Walsh proved tough in his personal life as well, caring for his ailing wife and dealing with the death of his son at a young age. Walsh even overpowered the effects of leukemia longer than expected and remained active in his final months.
Just a few weeks ago, he was spotted at the Stanford football practice field, taking in action from a summer camp.
Walsh was accustomed to a busy life. He retired from coaching the 49ers in 1989 but still managed to reshape Bay Area football over the course of the next 18 years.
He was the 49ers' general manager, served Stanford in several capacities, including head coach and interim athletic director, and helped save the football program at San Jose State, his alma mater.
But Walsh will most be remembered for his accomplishments with the 49ers, starting with the iconic victory over the Dallas Cowboys in the NFC championship game during the 1981 season. That game culminated with the dynasty-launching throw from Montana to Dwight Clark in the back of the end zone, a winning touchdown that became known as "The Catch."
"It was a classic game, I'll say that, and overcoming Dallas that day was huge, huge for our franchise," Walsh recalled during an interview with the Mercury News this spring. "Joe's throw and Dwight's catch continued our momentum to our first Super Bowl. But it was our coaches, players and team as a whole coming together in the crucible of a pressure game that was central to the ascendancy of the 49ers. That was the breakthrough for us."
Both private and public services are expected to be held this week, although details are not yet known.
Walsh's family is establishing a website, CoachWalsh.com.
Contact Daniel Brown at dbrown@mercurynews.com. Contact Dennis Georgatos at dgeorgatos@mercurynews.com.
Football legend Bill Walsh dies at 75
By Daniel Brown and Dennis Georgatos
Mercury News
San Jose Mercury News
07/30/2007
Bill Walsh, the brilliant coach who launched the 49ers dynasty and forever transformed the football landscape, died at his Woodside home Monday morning after a battle with leukemia. He was 75.
Walsh, perhaps the most influential strategist in NFL history, popularized and perfected the "West Coast offense" that paved the way for five 49ers Super Bowl victories. His innovations also propelled players such as Joe Montana toward the Hall of Fame and provided an oft-copied blueprint for coaches at every level.
Walsh died peacefully at 10:45 a.m. with his family by his side, according to family spokesman Kirk Reynolds. Walsh is survived by his wife, Geri; his daughter, Elizabeth; and his son, Craig. A second son, Steve, died of leukemia in 2002.
"This is just a tremendous loss for all of us, especially to the Bay Area because of what he meant to the 49ers," Montana told the Associated Press. "For me personally, outside of my dad he was probably the most influential person in my life. I am going to miss him."
Walsh was social until the end, Reynolds said. Sunday, former Stanford Coach Tyrone Willingham presented Walsh with the Amos Alonzo Stagg Award, courtesy of the American Football Coaches Association, for his contributions to the game. John Madden and Al Davis visited with Walsh on Saturday.
Joe Montana and Ronnie Lott paid Walsh a visit Wednesday. San Jose State President Don Kassing and athletic director Tom Bowen saw him Friday.
"We went to say goodbye," SJSU's Kassing said. "It was terribly sad, but Bill said, `Hey, Don, come over here.' I felt very priviledged to know him and have a chance to see him last week."
Walsh went 102-63-1 in 10 seasons with the 49ers and led the team to Super Bowl victories in the 1981, 1984 and 1988 seasons. He also left behind the framework for the '89 and '94 title teams.
"The secret was not only the fact that the team was victorious, but also the way it went about winning and handling the wins," Carmen Policy, the 49ers president during Walsh's glory years, said recently. "The team became a virtual bridge that linked the entire Bay Area into one community and all of the components of that community into one citizenry."
Along the way, Walsh mentored dozens of men who went on to be NFL coaches, and he later served as a major force in shaping the athletic departments of San Jose State and Stanford.
"Bill could have run Google or Microsoft," said Brent Jones, a 49ers tight end in 1987-97. "He was not happy with good, or very good, it had to be excellent at all times. He did that in his approach to coaching, design of plays and in his personnel."
Hired by desperate owner Eddie DeBartolo Jr. in 1979 and charged with turning around a moribund franchise, Walsh promptly laid the groundwork for one of the most successful stretches in sports history. His teams won six NFC West titles, won at least 10 games in seven of his final eight seasons and set a standard in which anything less than a Super Bowl was a crushing disappointment.
Walsh, who looked like a professor, was frequently portrayed as an egghead. As the late Jim Murray, the legendary Los Angeles Times columnist once wrote: "You half expect his headset is playing Mozart."
There was an element of truth to the depiction, as Walsh's wizardry at the chalkboard earned him the nickname "The Genius."
But the coach bristled at the stereotype; he was no wimpy intellectual. Walsh fought as a heavyweight in college - and later used boxing psychology in his tactics - and was unafraid of berating a burly lineman for a mistake. Walsh may have looked refined, though at times his language was anything but formal.
"It was spicy. Very spicy," former lineman Randy Cross said.
Walsh proved tough in his personal life as well, caring for his ailing wife and dealing with the death of his son at a young age. Walsh even overpowered the effects of leukemia longer than expected and remained active in his final months.
Just a few weeks ago, he was spotted at the Stanford football practice field, taking in action from a summer camp.
Walsh was accustomed to a busy life. He retired from coaching the 49ers in 1989 but still managed to reshape Bay Area football over the course of the next 18 years.
He was the 49ers' general manager, served Stanford in several capacities, including head coach and interim athletic director, and helped save the football program at San Jose State, his alma mater.
But Walsh will most be remembered for his accomplishments with the 49ers, starting with the iconic victory over the Dallas Cowboys in the NFC championship game during the 1981 season. That game culminated with the dynasty-launching throw from Montana to Dwight Clark in the back of the end zone, a winning touchdown that became known as "The Catch."
"It was a classic game, I'll say that, and overcoming Dallas that day was huge, huge for our franchise," Walsh recalled during an interview with the Mercury News this spring. "Joe's throw and Dwight's catch continued our momentum to our first Super Bowl. But it was our coaches, players and team as a whole coming together in the crucible of a pressure game that was central to the ascendancy of the 49ers. That was the breakthrough for us."
Both private and public services are expected to be held this week, although details are not yet known.
Walsh's family is establishing a website, CoachWalsh.com.
Contact Daniel Brown at dbrown@mercurynews.com. Contact Dennis Georgatos at dgeorgatos@mercurynews.com.
Bill Walsh, Former 49ers Coach, Dies at 75
Robalini's Note: Growing up in the Bay Area in Cupertino, California, I was blessed to have the home team to root for none other than the San Francisco 49ers, who from 1981-1998 had the greatest sustained run in NFL history. And with all due respect to Joe Montana (as well as Jerry Rice, Steve Young, Ronnie Lott and others) it was Bill Walsh, the coaching genius behind the Niners, who made the team what it was, and helped change the game of football with his West Coast Offense more than anyone else over the last thirty years. For this, he gets a special Konformist salute...
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/31/sports/football/31walsh.html
July 31, 2007
Bill Walsh, Former 49ers Coach, Dies at 75
By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN
Bill Walsh, who coached the San Francisco 49ers to three Super Bowl championships in the 1980s and became one of professional football’s most influential figures, devising passing strategies that were emulated long after the decline of his dynasty, died yesterday at his home in Woodside, Calif. He was 75.
The cause was leukemia, the 49ers said. Walsh disclosed last November that he was being treated for leukemia, which had been diagnosed two years earlier.
Except for high school coaching, Walsh did not become a head coach until Stanford hired him when he was 45. And he spent 11 seasons as an assistant in the N.F.L.
But his long apprenticeship — too long, the way he saw it — served him well. He honed his creativity and became known as “the genius,” a silver-haired, almost professorial presence orchestrating the 49ers’ brilliant offenses as the head coach from 1979 to 1988.
Walsh’s 49ers teams won Super Bowl titles in 1982, 1985 (after losing only one game all season) and 1989. They captured six National Football Conference West championships.
Walsh had a regular-season record of 92-59-1 with the 49ers, serving as offensive coordinator in addition to head coach and, at varying times, as the general manager and the club president. His lineups featured the future Hall of Famers Joe Montana at quarterback and Ronnie Lott at defensive back and the league’s career receiving leader, Jerry Rice. Walsh was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1993.
Walsh’s playbooks bulged, focusing on a passing game that became known as the West Coast offense. It featured mostly short or medium-range passes designed to work against all types of defenses, and it included trick plays. His was a horizontal offense, in contrast to the vertical strategy that depended on long — and low percentage — passes downfield. Walsh’s offense became the aerial equivalent of a ball-control strategy previously associated with a running game.
“When we go over the game plan during the week, it doesn’t look like it will work,” Montana told Dave Anderson of The New York Times shortly after the 49ers defeated the Cincinnati Bengals to win the Super Bowl for the first time. “But when we get into the game and use it, it seems that the plan always works.”
Walsh’s pass patterns generally succeeded in getting at least one receiver open and sometimes as many as three.
He cited several factors for his extraordinary success.
“I think we’re willing to settle for a little less yardage on passes than some teams are,” he said after the first Super Bowl triumph. “Two, our willingness to throw to the second and third receivers. And three, to look downfield for the great individual play.”
Walsh proved influential on matters beyond his passing game. He was an early advocate of minority hiring for coaching positions, many of his assistants became head coaches, and his procedures in organizing a team and developing practice routines were copied.
William Ernest Walsh, a native of Los Angeles, played wide receiver and boxed at San Jose State. After coaching in high school, he became an assistant at the University of California and at Stanford, then embarked on his pro career in 1966 as an assistant with the Oakland Raiders.
He moved to the expansion Cincinnati Bengals in 1968 as an assistant to the head coach and owner, Paul Brown, and developed Ken Anderson into an outstanding quarterback. When Brown retired and passed him over for the head-coaching spot in 1976, in favor of the offensive line coach Bill Johnson, Walsh joined the San Diego Chargers as the offensive coordinator and tutored quarterback Dan Fouts.
Walsh returned to the college ranks as Stanford’s coach in 1977 and 1978, taking the team to bowl games each season and developing Guy Benjamin and Steve Dils into star passers.
When Walsh became the 49ers’ coach in 1979, he took over a team that had gone 2-14 the previous season.
The 49ers were 2-14 again in Walsh’s first year, but he gradually built a championship squad.
A signature play came in the 1982 National Football Conference championship game against the Dallas Cowboys, when Montana rolled out and threw a 6-yard touchdown pass to Dwight Clark at the back of the end zone in the final minute.
Shortly after the 49ers won the 1989 Super Bowl, Walsh stepped down as the coach and became the team’s executive vice president for football operations. But in July ’89, he left to become a football broadcaster for NBC. His successor, George Seifert, who had been the 49ers’ defensive coordinator, went on to win two Super Bowls with San Francisco.
Walsh had a second tenure as Stanford’s coach, from 1992 to 1994. He returned to the 49ers as the vice president and general manager from 1999 to 2001, was later a consultant to the team and served as Stanford’s interim athletic director in 2005-6.
He is survived by his wife, Geri; a son, Craig of Redwood City, Calif; a daughter, Elizabeth of San Francisco; a sister, Maureen of Mission Viejo, Calif; and two grandchildren.
Walsh regarded football as something beyond a test of physical will.
“If I have any talent, it’s in the artistic end of football,” he once told Lowell Cohn of The San Francisco Chronicle.
“The variation of movement of 11 players and the orchestration of that facet of football is beautiful to me.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/31/sports/football/31walsh.html
July 31, 2007
Bill Walsh, Former 49ers Coach, Dies at 75
By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN
Bill Walsh, who coached the San Francisco 49ers to three Super Bowl championships in the 1980s and became one of professional football’s most influential figures, devising passing strategies that were emulated long after the decline of his dynasty, died yesterday at his home in Woodside, Calif. He was 75.
The cause was leukemia, the 49ers said. Walsh disclosed last November that he was being treated for leukemia, which had been diagnosed two years earlier.
Except for high school coaching, Walsh did not become a head coach until Stanford hired him when he was 45. And he spent 11 seasons as an assistant in the N.F.L.
But his long apprenticeship — too long, the way he saw it — served him well. He honed his creativity and became known as “the genius,” a silver-haired, almost professorial presence orchestrating the 49ers’ brilliant offenses as the head coach from 1979 to 1988.
Walsh’s 49ers teams won Super Bowl titles in 1982, 1985 (after losing only one game all season) and 1989. They captured six National Football Conference West championships.
Walsh had a regular-season record of 92-59-1 with the 49ers, serving as offensive coordinator in addition to head coach and, at varying times, as the general manager and the club president. His lineups featured the future Hall of Famers Joe Montana at quarterback and Ronnie Lott at defensive back and the league’s career receiving leader, Jerry Rice. Walsh was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1993.
Walsh’s playbooks bulged, focusing on a passing game that became known as the West Coast offense. It featured mostly short or medium-range passes designed to work against all types of defenses, and it included trick plays. His was a horizontal offense, in contrast to the vertical strategy that depended on long — and low percentage — passes downfield. Walsh’s offense became the aerial equivalent of a ball-control strategy previously associated with a running game.
“When we go over the game plan during the week, it doesn’t look like it will work,” Montana told Dave Anderson of The New York Times shortly after the 49ers defeated the Cincinnati Bengals to win the Super Bowl for the first time. “But when we get into the game and use it, it seems that the plan always works.”
Walsh’s pass patterns generally succeeded in getting at least one receiver open and sometimes as many as three.
He cited several factors for his extraordinary success.
“I think we’re willing to settle for a little less yardage on passes than some teams are,” he said after the first Super Bowl triumph. “Two, our willingness to throw to the second and third receivers. And three, to look downfield for the great individual play.”
Walsh proved influential on matters beyond his passing game. He was an early advocate of minority hiring for coaching positions, many of his assistants became head coaches, and his procedures in organizing a team and developing practice routines were copied.
William Ernest Walsh, a native of Los Angeles, played wide receiver and boxed at San Jose State. After coaching in high school, he became an assistant at the University of California and at Stanford, then embarked on his pro career in 1966 as an assistant with the Oakland Raiders.
He moved to the expansion Cincinnati Bengals in 1968 as an assistant to the head coach and owner, Paul Brown, and developed Ken Anderson into an outstanding quarterback. When Brown retired and passed him over for the head-coaching spot in 1976, in favor of the offensive line coach Bill Johnson, Walsh joined the San Diego Chargers as the offensive coordinator and tutored quarterback Dan Fouts.
Walsh returned to the college ranks as Stanford’s coach in 1977 and 1978, taking the team to bowl games each season and developing Guy Benjamin and Steve Dils into star passers.
When Walsh became the 49ers’ coach in 1979, he took over a team that had gone 2-14 the previous season.
The 49ers were 2-14 again in Walsh’s first year, but he gradually built a championship squad.
A signature play came in the 1982 National Football Conference championship game against the Dallas Cowboys, when Montana rolled out and threw a 6-yard touchdown pass to Dwight Clark at the back of the end zone in the final minute.
Shortly after the 49ers won the 1989 Super Bowl, Walsh stepped down as the coach and became the team’s executive vice president for football operations. But in July ’89, he left to become a football broadcaster for NBC. His successor, George Seifert, who had been the 49ers’ defensive coordinator, went on to win two Super Bowls with San Francisco.
Walsh had a second tenure as Stanford’s coach, from 1992 to 1994. He returned to the 49ers as the vice president and general manager from 1999 to 2001, was later a consultant to the team and served as Stanford’s interim athletic director in 2005-6.
He is survived by his wife, Geri; a son, Craig of Redwood City, Calif; a daughter, Elizabeth of San Francisco; a sister, Maureen of Mission Viejo, Calif; and two grandchildren.
Walsh regarded football as something beyond a test of physical will.
“If I have any talent, it’s in the artistic end of football,” he once told Lowell Cohn of The San Francisco Chronicle.
“The variation of movement of 11 players and the orchestration of that facet of football is beautiful to me.”
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