One of the top 2 or 3 all-time coaches even though he only coached 10 years in the NFL. Best all-time offense & some of the best ever defensive coaching. Plenty of class.
2 decades influence on Super Bowls including the late 90s Broncos adoptation of a 49er offense through a former 49er coach.
The 1984 & 88 49ers were along with the 70s Steelers the best ever-teams.
There had been NFL coaching trees before, but there has never been one quite like the one Bill Walsh planted.
Across the league, his roots of greatness have taken hold and spread considerable branches of success, thanks to Walsh's uncanny intuition for spotting coaching talent, vision and temperament.
Walsh, who has passed away at the age of 75, unearthed them. They have quick minds, stout hearts and strong personalities, traits much like his own.
The forest was planted in 1979, when Walsh was convinced by a brash young NFL owner, Eddie DeBartolo, to move over from Stanford and rebuild his moribund franchise.
As Walsh overhauled the 49ers from 2-14 in '79 into a Super Bowl champion in only three seasons, he hired a remarkable group of young assistants, all of whom became head coaches:.
Mike Holmgren. Mike White. Ray Rhodes. Sam Wyche. Bruce Coslet. George Seifert. Dennis Green.
Most of them planted impressive coaching trees of their own.
Today, 14 of the NFL's 32 head coaches are either direct descendants or second- and-third generation disciples of the Walsh coaching empire.
Certainly you can argue that the many branches extending from the legends and lessons of Paul Brown, George Halas, Sid Gillman, Tom Landry and Al Davis exerted considerable influence of their own.
But Walsh, who began under Gillman and Davis with the Raiders in 1966, might have the grandest legacy of them all.
Gillman, a Pro Football Hall of Famer acknowledged as the father of the modern NFL passing game, then Davis, the genius behind the vertical passing attack, handed off a young Walsh to Brown in Cincinnati in 1968.
And Brown, another Hall of Famer who is credited with being the chief architect of the modern NFL offense, recognized the greatness simmering inside the mind of his 36-year-old protege.
He made the scholarly Walsh the offensive coordinator of his expansion Bengals franchise.
Walsh then found a willing and powerful arm in the likes of a young quarterback named Greg Cook, the AFL's rookie of the year in 1969. Cook passed for 1,854 yards that season, despite feeling a suspicious pop in his throwing shoulder.
No one realized that Cook's right shoulder and elbow had been irreparably damaged midway through his rookie season. Cook's promising football career was effectively over.
And Walsh had to retool.
Pure arm strength from an exceptional quarterback couldn't do it all, the coach surmised.
So the cunning coordinator devised an elaborate offensive choreography. His scheme was built on timing, precision, multiple sets, motion and quick drops by a powerful, smart quarterback -- the maestro whose footwork and vision conducted the entire symphony.
Eventually, the football would get downfield in a hurry, either through the air or in the hands of a running back set free by the frenzy of four or five receivers and tight ends swarming in routes.
How did Brown, so revered for his contributions to offensive football, view his innovative coordinator?
As a threat, Walsh would later say.
Walsh was convinced Brown was impeding his dream of becoming an NFL head coach, especially when Brown retired in 1975 and passed over his offensive coordinator to name offensive line coach Bill "Tiger" Johnson as his successor.
Stung by the move, Walsh resigned and spent two seasons coaching at Stanford before DeBartolo offered him his first crack at running an NFL show.
That is exactly what Walsh did.
His coaching style called for singular authority. The head coach, he believed, was the preeminent power broker. And the ultimate fall guy, if things went sour.
Walsh believed strongly in teamwork and commitment. As a teacher, he was as firm as he was genial. His sense of humor -- often bawdy -- always remained at the ready.
Above all else, Walsh valued honesty.
"Nothing is more effective than sincere, accurate praise," he once said, "and nothing is more lame than a cookie-cutter compliment."
Walsh's many coaching charges would reap fruit from their head coach, scripting championship teams and molding Pro Bowl players. They, in turn, spread the bounty far and wide.
-- Holmgren, whom Walsh hired in 1986 as the quarterbacks coach and eventually became the offensive coordinator, turned out no fewer than five current or former NFL head coaches under his watch in Green Bay and Seattle: Mike Sherman, Andy Reid, Steve Mariucci, Marty Mornhinweg and Brad Childress.
-- Green first joined the 49ers as a receivers and special teams coach in 1979 and returned as receivers coach in 1986, Later, as head coach of the Minnesota Vikings, he would hire Brian Billick, who later schooled Jack Del Rio; Mike Tice, who brought along Scott Linehan; and Tony Dungy, coach of the Super Bowl champion Indianapolis Colts, whose legacy includes three NFL head coaching contemporaries -- Lovie Smith, Mike Tomlin and Rod Marinelli.
-- Seifert, a defensive specialist who joined Walsh's 49ers' staff in 1980 as a secondary coach and later became defensive coordinator, found real coaching gems in Mike Shanahan and Jeff Fisher.
-- Wyche, Walsh's quarterbacks coach from 1979-82, discovered former Bills head coach Mike Mularkey, now a Dolphins assistant.
-- Paul Hackett never became an NFL head coach but had considerable success as an offensive coordinator thanks to Walsh bringing him to the NFL in 1983 as a 49ers quarterbacks/receivers coach, succeeding Wyche. Hackett, in turn, would introduce Mike McCarthy and Jon Gruden into the NFL. And Gruden's offensive line coach at the Raiders, Bill Callahan, eventually became head coach of the Silver and Black.
Walsh's spreading tree, his incomparable lineage and legacy of coaches, is shaken somewhat today at his passing. But the branches are as strong as ever.
