Off the Beaten Path

It’s not often that you’ll find a piece on another team on this site. You’d maybe be even more hard pressed to find anything written about a specific figure in sports not having anything to do with the Sox or baseball in general. With this site being dedicated to the Boston Red Sox and the baseball world that surrounds them, it has been my primary focus and intent to write solely on that facet of the sports world. However, today is a little different in the respect that one of two of my favorite football coaches of all time has passed away.

This morning Bill Walsh, former coach of the San Francisco 49ers and Stanford Cardinals, passed away at the age of 75 after his extensive battle with leukemia. Walsh led the 49ers to three Super Bowl Championships and six NFC West division titles during his 10-year career in San Francisco. Walsh was 102-63 with one tie as a head coach in the NFL.

More than the numbers, which were impressive enough to induct him into the NFL Hall of Fame, is his mark on today’s NFL. That impression is as profound as the coach whose name resides on the Super Bowl trophy itself. His legacy spans from his assistant coaches George Seifert and Mike Holmgren who went on to win Super Bowls of their own, to coaches like John Gruden and Mike Shanahan who won Super Bowls with their own teams as products of an assistant to an assistant to Bill Walsh. Many more notable head coaches and assistant coaches came from the house that Walsh built including Andy Reid, Steve Mariucci, Marty Mornhinweg, Dennis Green and Dick Juron. This list goes on and on. The coaching tree is endless and now spans nearly two decades and nearly 30 current or former NFL head coaches. That number includes active head coaches in the NFL in Brad Childress, John Fox, Mike McCarthy, Jeff Fisher, Gary Kubiak, Brian Billick, Jack Del Rio, Scott Linehan, Tony Dungy, Rod Marinelli and Mike Tomlin. That’s 12 (not including Holmgren and Shanahan) coaches and over one third of all the coaches in the NFL that are decedents of the success that Walsh produced. Walsh was also a major proponent of having African-American coaches in not only his ranks, but as head coaches across the NFL and college football. The historic moment at Super Bowl XLI this past February where both head coaches were the first African-American’s to be head coaches of Super Bowl teams are in the Walsh coaching tree. Indianapolis Colts head coach Tony Dungy was the first African-American to hoist the Vince Lombardi Trophy. Both Dungy and Chicago Bears head Coach Lovie Smith, while not directly coach under Walsh, were pushed by the fact that Walsh assistant Dennis Green became one of the first prominent black head coaches in the NFL.

Even more indelible of a mark is the proliferation of the West Coast offense that is not only littered across the NFL, but college football as well. Walsh didn’t initially create the scheme known as the West Coast offense, but it will be forever tied to him from his glory days in San Francisco and the dynasty he created while coaching the 49ers and his days as offensive coordinator in Cincinnati under head coach Paul Brown. The term wasn’t even coined by Walsh himself, but by Sports Illustrated writer Paul “Dr. Z” Zimmerman in 1993. Whatever the circumstances of the phrase that is commonly used to describe the offense he made successful, it has been copied and redone to much success since the early 1980’s and is still used in many offensive schemes today.

Bill Walsh will be missed by the San Francisco community, the 49er and Cardinal fan base and by NFL fans across the world.