Bill Walsh dies

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Former 49er head coach Bill Walsh dies

Tom FitzGerald, Chronicle Staff Writer



Bill Walsh, the imaginative and charismatic coach who took over a downtrodden 49ers team and built one of the greatest franchises in NFL history, has died at the age of 75 after a long struggle with leukemia, it was announced today.

A master of using short, precisely timed passes to control the ball in what became known as the West Coast offense, he guided the team to three Super Bowl championships and six NFC West division titles in his 10 years as head coach.

The 49ers had been wrecked by mismanagement and unwise personnel decisions under former general manager Joe Thomas when owner Ed DeBartolo Jr. cleaned house in 1979. Walsh, who had led Stanford to two bowl victories in two seasons as head coach, took a 49ers team that had finished 2-14 in 1978 and built a Super Bowl champion in just three years. It was one of the most remarkable turnarounds in professional sports history.

His teams would win two more Super Bowls (following the 1984 and 1988 seasons) before he turned the team over to George Seifert, who directed the 49ers to two more championships ('89 and '94). Walsh set the foundation for an unprecedented streak in the NFL of 16 consecutive seasons with at least 10 wins.

He had a knack for spotting talent and then developing that talent to its fullest. His touch was particularly deft when it came to quarterbacks. He drafted Joe Montana in the third round in 1979 and acquired Steve Young, then a backup with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, in 1987 for second- and fourth-round draft choices. Both were elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

At his own Hall of Fame induction in Canton, Ohio, in 1993, Walsh revealed he nearly didn't make it to the end of his second season in San Francisco.

"In those first three years, we were trying to find the right formula," he said. "We went 2-14 that first year (1979). The next year we won three and then lost eight in row. I looked out of the window for five hours on the plane ride home from Miami after the eighth straight loss, and I had concluded I wasn't going to make it. I was going to move into management."

He changed his mind and finished the season, a 6-10 year. The 49ers gave notice of things to come in a late-season game against the New Orleans Saints at Candlestick Park. Trailing 35-7 at halftime, they thundered back to win 38-35 in overtime. At the time, it was the biggest comeback in NFL history.

But the real magic was yet to come. After losing their first two games in 1981, the 49ers would win 15 of their next 16 games in a methodical yet astonishing march. Behind Montana and wide receivers Dwight Clark and Freddy Solomon and a defense led by linebacker Jack "Hacksaw" Reynolds, pass rushing whiz Fred Dean and a secondary that started three rookies -- Ronnie Lott, Eric Wright and Carlton Williamson -- they became the first NFL team in 34 years to go from the worst record to the best in just three seasons.

To do it, they had to shock the Dallas Cowboys 28-27 in the NFC Championship Game. They won it on Montana's scrambling 6-yard pass to a leaping Clark with 51 seconds left. The play, dubbed "The Catch," is the most celebrated moment in Bay Area sports history.

"That was a practiced play," Walsh said. "Now, we didn't expect three guys right down his throat. That was Joe who got the pass off in that situation, putting it where only Clark could come up with it."

Walsh showed his zany side two weeks later in Pontiac, Mich. Arriving before the team, he borrowed a bellman's uniform at the hotel and collected the players' bags at the curb, even holding out his hand for tips. His players didn't immediately recognize him, including Montana, who got into a brief tug-of-war with him when Walsh tried to grab his briefcase.

In Super Bowl XVI, the 49ers built a 20-0 lead but needed a memorable goal-line stand in the fourth quarter to hold off the Cincinnati Bengals and win 26-21.

Pro football in San Francisco would never be the same.

Walsh and his players were stunned by the reception they received when they returned to San Francisco. "There was a suggestion of a parade for us," Walsh said years later, "and I remember thinking that with the general fatigue I was reluctant to put the players through something that might be just a few people waving handkerchiefs on the street corner."

Instead, the city had basically been shut down for a celebration by more than half a million people, cheering San Francisco's first NFL champions as they were driven down Market Street.

"It was just an overwhelming experience, the realization that millions and millions of people had been following us," Walsh said. "That's when I realized what an accomplishment, what an historic moment for the city, it was to win a professional championship."

The 1984 team was probably Walsh's finest, an 18-1 powerhouse with a record-setting offense and the league's stingiest defense. It pounded Dan Marino and the Miami Dolphins in Super Bowl XIX at Stanford Stadium. That spring (1985), Walsh drafted a receiver from Mississippi Valley State named Jerry Rice, and the offense would get even better.

A last-ditch catch by Rice on a pass from Montana stole a victory over the Bengals in 1987. The play was memorable not only because it won the game but because it prompted a bizarre reaction by the head coach: Walsh joyfully skipped off the field.

One of the most thrilling Super Bowls (XXIII) followed the 1988 season. Rice was voted the game's Most Valuable Player after making 11 catches for a Super Bowl-record 215 yards. But the 49ers needed a 92-yard drive engineered by Montana in the final minutes and a last-minute, 10-yard TD pass from Montana to John Taylor to beat Cincinnati 20-16.

A few minutes later in the locker room, Walsh hugged his son Craig and, to the surprise of others in the raucous celebration, burst into tears. A week later, he revealed why he was so emotional: He had decided he'd had enough earlier that season. He was stepping down. "This is the way most coaches would like to leave the game," he said.

Clearly that last year was a strain on Walsh, who was often at odds with DeBartolo and the media. The team struggled to a 6-5 start that year, and Walsh later said his intensity was waning, partly because he was "weary of the daily press-sparring."

Ever sensitive to criticism, he said during the playoffs that year, "You become the victim of your success. Everybody expects nothing but wins. They ignore that 27 other franchises have equal desires and opportunities, and that so-called parity gives winning teams tougher schedules and poorer positioning in the draft.

"Owners demand high production. Fans get to where they can't understand why you lost, even if the team makes the playoffs before bowing. And the media, they always want to know how you lost, who screwed up, why it wasn't done differently, and every detail about your personal life."

He later second-guessed his decision to step down, telling the San Jose Mercury News in 2002, "I never should have left. I'm still disappointed in myself for not continuing. There's no telling how many Super Bowls we might have won."

In his decade as the 49ers' coach, Walsh won six division titles and had a 102-63-1 record, a mark made even more striking by the fact his teams won only nine of their first 35 games.

There were bitter disappointments during those years. The 1982 team couldn't handle success, suffered from drug problems and went 3-6 in a strike-shortened season. The 1983 team went to the NFC title game, only to lose at Washington 24-21, thanks in part to a couple of debatable calls that set up the winning field goal.

Walsh criticized both calls. By the rules, if the officials determine that the pass could not have been caught, even without interference, no penalty is called. Walsh protested that when Wright was called for pass interference, the ball "could not have been caught by a 10-foot Boston Celtic."

Before the championship 1988 season, there were three straight years of first-round playoff defeats. Even though the 49ers compiled the NFL's best regular-season record in 1987, their playoff loss caused DeBartolo to strip Walsh of his title of team president. In the ensuing years, Walsh and DeBartolo patched up their differences, and DeBartolo was Walsh's presenter at the Hall of Fame.

He was named the "Coach of the '80s" by the selection committee of the Hall of Fame. His impact on the NFL was evident in the number of his assistants who went on to head coaching jobs, including Seifert, Dennis Green, Mike Holmgren, Ray Rhodes, Sam Wyche, Bruce Coslet, Mike White and Paul Hackett. Those coaches in turn spawned a host of other coaches, all imbued with Walsh's distinctive offensive schemes.

He was an expert in developing quarterbacks, from Ken Anderson, Virgil Carter and Greg Cook with the Bengals, Dan Fouts with the Chargers, Guy Benjamin and Steve Dils at Stanford and, of course, Montana and Young with the 49ers. He said he looked for resourcefulness, creativity and passing accuracy in his quarterbacks; arm strength was far down the list.

"We spent hours on everything a quarterback does: every step he takes, the number of steps he takes, how he moves between pass rushers or to the outside, when he goes to alternate receivers," he wrote in his 1989 book, "Building a Champion" (with former Chronicle columnist Glenn Dickey). "It's similar to a basketball player practicing different situational shots."

He told an interviewer that the West Coast offense started with the Cincinnati Bengals, where he was quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator under coach Paul Brown from 1968-75. Walsh borrowed on the principles of Sid Gillman, the legendary San Diego coach, and others.

"It was born of an expansion franchise that just didn't have near the talent to compete," he said. "That was probably the worst-stocked franchise in the history of the NFL. ... The best possible way to compete would be a team that could make as many first downs as possible in a contest and control the football.

"We couldn't control the football with the run; teams were just too strong. So it had to be the forward pass, and obviously it had to be a high-percentage, short, controlled passing game. So through a series of formation-changing and timed passes -- using all eligible receivers, especially the fullback -- we were able to put together an offense and develop it over a period of time."

The West Coast offense meant the ball could be thrown on any down or distance. It meant having the quarterback get rid of the ball quickly, to limit the risk of sacks or turnovers. It didn't mean ignoring the running game, but it could make up for a weak rushing attack. For example, the 49ers' leading rusher in their first championship year was Ricky Patten, who had just 543 yards.

"The old-line NFL people called it a nickel-and-dime offense," Walsh said in his book. "They, in a sense, had disregard and contempt for it, but whenever they played us, they had to deal with it."

He pioneered the idea of scripting a game's first 25 plays, a habit he started with the Bengals. At first it was just four plays, then six. When he went to the San Diego Chargers, it was 15, then 25. He refined the script at Stanford, and it later was a staple with the 49ers. The script was never a hard and fast list; he would stray from the list if the situation warranted, then return to it later.

"The whole thought behind 'scripting' was that we could make our decisions much more thoroughly and with more definition on Thursday or Friday than during a game, when all the tension, stress and emotion can make it extremely difficult to think clearly," he wrote.

Practices under Walsh were not the bruising sessions they were under most other coaches. "We didn't beat guys up," he said in an interview in Football Digest. He preferred to save the contact for the game and concentrate instead on preparing for every situation that might come up in a game.

"The format of practice and contingency planning -- those, to me, are the biggest contributions that I've made to the game," he said.

Another contribution was the Minority Coaching Fellowship, a program he created in 1987 to help African American coaches improve their job prospects in the NFL and Division I colleges by inviting them to an up-close look at the 49ers' training camps. Among those who took advantage of the program were Tyrone Willingham, former Stanford head coach and current head coach at the University of Washington; Cincinnati Bengals head coach Marvin Lewis and several NFL assistants. The NFL later turned the Fellowship into a league-wide program.

When he quit as coach of the 49ers, Walsh moved into a vicepresident's position in the organization. He wasn't there long. He joined NBC Sports in 1989 and teamed with Dick Enberg for three seasons as the network's top analyst on NFL and Notre Dave telecasts. Although Walsh can be very glib, his TV work was cautious, and he didn't seem to enjoy it.

Walsh maintained his strong ties with Stanford and, in a decision that surprised the football world, returned as head coach in 1992. He immediately led the Cardinal to a 10-3 record, including a victory over Penn State in the Blockbuster Bowl. "If Walsh was a general," said ESPN analyst Beano Cook, "he would be able to overrun Europe with the army from Sweden."

After three years at Stanford and a 17-17-1 record overall, he left coaching for good. "It was time to move on," he said.

To him, diagramming plays and getting players to execute them exactly represented an art form. "I am a man who draws pass patterns on his wife's shoulder," he said.

He fostered the image of the articulate, white-haired professor who cracked jokes at press conferences and devoured biographies and history books in his spare time. In reality, his cool shell hid a feisty disposition.

Fred VonAppen, who coached with him on the 49ers and Stanford, told an interviewer in 1993, "He's a complex man, somewhat of an enigma. I gave up trying to understand him a long time ago. In a way he has the kind of personality that creates a love-hate relationship. He's not always the distinguished, patriarchal guy television viewers are used to seeing on the sidelines. He's a very competitive guy, and he can be scathing, especially in the heat of battle. There have been times when I would have gladly split his skull with an ax. Then again, he's the greatest."

Over the years Walsh has served as a consultant in various NFL ventures. In 1994 he helped create the World League of American Football, which became NFL Europe.

He returned to the 49ers in 1996 as a consultant, but the organization was in turmoil. DeBartolo was under a federal investigation into his pursuit of a riverboat casino license in Louisiana. Walsh clashed with team president Carmen Policy, personnel director Dwight Clark and some of the coaches. He felt he couldn't get anything done. Meanwhile, salary cap problems were building.

He left but came back two years later. Policy and Clark had left for the Cleveland Browns. Walsh helped extricate the team from its cap difficulty and get it through the ownership change from DeBartolo to his sister, Denise York, and her husband, Dr. John York. He had a strong influence in restocking the roster and signed Jeff Garcia, a former San Jose State quarterback then starring in Canada. His faith in Garcia would pay off; the quarterback was elected to the Pro Bowl three times with the 49ers.

Walsh turned the general manager's position over to Terry Donahue in 2001, but continued to serve as a consultant. This was a tragic time in his life. His mother died in 2002. A week later his son, Steve, a KGO radio reporter, died of leukemia at the age of 46. His wife, Geri, was still suffering the debilitating effects of a stroke in 1998.

He went back to Stanford for a third time in 2004 to work with then-Athletic Director Ted Leland on special projects and fundraising initiatives, as well as serving as a consultant for coaches and athletes. He also was in demand as a public speaker.

When Leland left, Walsh served as interim athletic director for seven months and was instrumental in planning for the rebuilding of Stanford Stadium, which was accomplished with breathtaking quickness in 2006. He gave up the athletic director position when Bob Bowlsby took over this year.

William Ernest Walsh was born Nov. 30, 1931, the son of a day laborer who worked at various times at an auto factory, a railroad yard and a brickyard. When Walsh was 15, his father got him a job in a garage near the Los Angeles Coliseum. The family moved around California frequently.

He had only average athletic skills but was a running back on the football team at Hayward High. Unable to attract a scholarship offer, he played quarterback for two years at the College of San Mateo and went on to an injury-hampered career as a receiver at San Jose State.

In college, he met a pretty California woman named Geri Nardini during a day at the beach. Shortly thereafter he proposed, and they married in 1955, the same year he earned his bachelor's degree.

After a hitch in the Army at Fort Ord, he became a graduate assistant at San Jose State under his old coach, Bob Bronzan. When Walsh completed his studies for his master's in education in 1959, Bronzan wrote a recommendation for Walsh's placement file: "I predict Bill Walsh will become the outstanding football coach in the United States."

He took over a struggling team at Washington Union High School in Fremont -- the team had lost 27 straight games -- and took it to a conference championship in 1957 with a 9-1 season.

"When you went to a game, you or one of the guys you worked with had to drive the team to the game," he said. "That was just part of the job, so I learned to drive one of those big school buses."

He took a big step forward in 1960 when he was hired as defensive coordinator by Cal coach Marv Levy. In 1963 he moved up to administrative assistant, recruiting coordinator and defensive backfield coach at Stanford under John Ralston.

When he left Washington High at 27, he had hoped to be a college head coach by the time he was 30. Instead, he spent the next 18 years as an assistant.

In 1966 he took his first pro job with the Raiders and made the switch from defense to offense, coaching the backfield. Although John Rauch was the head coach, Walsh later called owner Al Davis one of his mentors. Another was Paul Brown, who was awarded an expansion franchise in Cincinnati and hired Walsh as quarterbacks and receivers coach for the first Bengals team in 1968.

Brown gave Walsh free rein to refine his sophisticated passing game, but when Brown retired in 1976, he named offensive line coach Bill Johnson as his successor. Had Brown named Walsh, it's conceivable that the Bengals, rather than the 49ers, would have been the Team of the '80s.

Walsh, who had turned down several promising jobs because he was sure he was Brown's heir apparent, was devastated. Miffed that "nobody would take me seriously," he considered leaving football. "It was beginning to look as if I would never make it as a head coach," he said.

Instead, San Diego coach Tommy Prothro hired him as offensive coordinator, and he guided the Chargers' high-powered aerial attack around Fouts. A year later he finally got a head coaching job, at Stanford at the age of 45, and quickly proved he was up to the task of leadership. Two years later, he was the 49ers coach. Three years after that, he was The Genius of San Francisco.

He is survived by his wife, Geri, and two children, Craig and Elizabeth.
Walsh's coaching history

1956 -- Graduate assistant coach, San Jose State

1957-59 -- Head coach, Washington Union High School, Fremont

1960-62 -- Defensive coordinator, Cal

1963-65 -- Defensive backs coach, Stanford

1966 -- Offensive backs coach, Raiders

1967 -- Head coach, San Jose Apaches (semipro), Continental Football League

1968-75 -- Offensive coordinator, Cincinnati Bengals

1976 -- Offensive coordinator, San Diego Chargers

1977-78 -- Head coach, Stanford

1979-88 -- Head coach, 49ers

1992-94 -- Head coach, Stanford

Year by year as a head coach

Stanford

Year W L

1977 9 3 Won Sun Bowl

1978 8 4 Won Bluebonnet Bow

1992 10 3 Won Blockbuster Bowl

1993 4 7

1994 3 7 (1 tie)

Total 34-24 (1 tie)

49ers

1979 2 14

1980 6 10

1981 16 3 Won Super Bowl XVI

1982 3 6

1983 11 7 Lost NFC Championship Game

1984 18 1 Won Super Bowl XIX

1985 10 7 Lost wild-card game

1986 10 6 (1 tie) Lost playoff

1987 13 3 Lost playoff

1988 13 6 Won Super Bowl XXIII

Total 102-63 (1 tie)

Notes: Won-lost records include postseason games. NFL regular seasons in 1982 and 1987 were shortened to nine and 15 games, respectively, by player strikes.