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Even a short list of Walsh's adherents is stunning. Seifert, Mike Holmgren, Dennis Green, Sam Wyche, Ray Rhodes and Bruce Coslet all became NFL head coaches after serving on Walsh's San Francisco staffs, and Tony Dungy played for him. Most of his former assistants passed on Walsh's structures and strategies to a new generation of coaches, including Mike Shanahan, Jon Gruden, Brian Billick, Andy Reid, Pete Carroll, Gary Kubiak, Steve Mariucci and Jeff Fisher.

Walsh a genius? When it came to managing people, label might have fit
Bill Walsh wasn't a genius. But he was close.

Bill Walsh knew how to put people in position to succeed -- or help his team get there.
He knew football, understood its players and helped develop its coaches and its strategies. More than anything, though, he knew people -- and that's what set him apart from coaches and general managers who aspired to what Bill Walsh became.

Yes, he was great for the game, but not because he developed the West Coast offense or saw something in Steve Young that others did not. It was because he understood its people and how to position them for results.

He traded for Young, then used him as a foil for Joe Montana. If Montana was struggling, Walsh didn't hesitate to call on the promising Young -- which, Walsh knew, would infuriate Joe.
But the idea wasn't to placate Montana; it was to win games. And if Walsh could push Montana with Young, he would.

Walsh made the 49ers a dominant franchise for two decades, and he rebuilt them twice. But anyone who follows the game knows that. What you don't know is who Bill Walsh was -- and I didn't, either, until dealing with him in 1999.

The 49ers were languishing through their first losing year since the strike-truncated 1982 season, and Walsh was trying to salvage a sinking ship. Midway through the season, a member of the team's public relations department tapped me on the shoulder at practice to tell me Walsh wanted to see me.

Now, Walsh and I had gotten to know each other years before, when we played tennis. But this conversation, I knew, would have nothing to do with tennis.

It would be about a critical piece I'd written on the 49ers for the San Jose Mercury News, a story where I questioned where the club was going and how Walsh and Co. were responsible for moves that put it in an impossible situation.
I knew I was about to be taken to the woodshed, and I was more than willing to defend my position. Only I didn't have to.

When I entered the second-floor office Walsh occupied, he asked me to sit down. Then he disarmed me by asking how he could facilitate a better working relationship between us. When I told him he could start by explaining some of his moves, he said he would.

"OK," I told him, "but on the record."
Walsh was unmoved.
"Go ahead," he said. "Ask me anything."

And I did. I asked about Young's future. And about the futures of wide receiver Jerry Rice and new quarterback Jeff Garcia, forced onto the field by a concussion that would end Young's career. I asked about the offensive line. The draft. Walsh's future. The future of the team.

When we were through, more than an hour had passed, and I realized I never really understood Bill Walsh until that moment. So I didn't agree with everything he said. He didn't agree with a lot of what I said, either. The point was it didn't matter. What did matter is that, for the first time, I understood why he did what he did. Plus, he made an effort -- an effort -- to make me understand.

It wasn't until later I understood why.

At that moment, I left the room thinking I just gained an extraordinary education. I understood more, much more, than I did from watching a hundred 49ers practices. Walsh walked me through decisions, opened the door to his thinking and invited me in.

I was only too glad to follow.
I resolved to start listening more -- I mean, truly listening -- when Walsh explained his next move. Because when you listened to him, you learned. You always learned with Bill Walsh.

We once had a difference of opinion on Garcia, with Walsh firm in his belief that Garcia could win in the NFL and I just as adamant that he was a warm body occupying the position until the next Young or Montana came along.
Walsh was right, of course. He almost always was.

He was the guy who later that season suggested the 49ers have a halftime ceremony honoring offensive line coach Bobb McKittrick when McKittrick was fighting liver cancer.
I didn't understand the move, thinking it was premature and insensitive to McKittrick, in the middle of a battle I wasn't sure he would lose. But Walsh was all about timing, and he thought the time was perfect to honor one of the team's most respected and cherished assistants.
And so the 49ers did, with McKittrick leaving the locker room to appear on the field with his wife and a group of U.S. Marines. I remember thinking how poised McKittrick was and how ramrod straight he stood. I knew he was in pain. Everyone did. But he seemed grateful for the occasion and thanked everyone.

He never made it to the next season.

Afterward, I told Walsh that what he did for Bobb McKittrick that afternoon was give him one of the last great days of his life, and that I would hope that somewhere, someone would do the same for me if I were dying.

And that's when it dawned on me that Walsh always, always was ahead of the curve. He had asked to see me that afternoon in 1999 because he needed an ally to help him with a painful rebuilding program that would purge the club of beloved veterans and rattle its fans.

It would also put the 49ers back on the map, but that didn't matter at the time. Walsh needed someone to explain what he was doing and why he was doing; more, he needed someone to explain why it was good for the San Francisco 49ers.

Walsh would go on to rebuild the club a second time, stocking it with so many starters from the 2000 draft that San Francisco would make the playoffs in 2001 and 2002. It was incomprehensible to me that a team that had grown as old as it had by 1999 could rebound that quickly.

But that was Bill Walsh. He understood when it was time to move forward with one player and to cut ties with another. He understood what made the game work because he understood the players and the coaches who make it work.

And that's what I loved about Bill Walsh. You could never underestimate him. He knew what he knew, and you had better pay attention because, in the end, he would persevere.

I just wish he would've won once more.

Above all, Walsh's talent was about talent """
Since the history of the National Football League is constantly rewritten, Bill Walsh is remembered today as one of its seminal figures ever.

He isn't. He defined a decade, which is pretty damned impressive. There have only been nine of them, including this one, so that's legacy enough. Halas ... Lambeau ... Brown ... Lombardi ... Noll ... Walsh ... Belichick ... yeah, it fits just fine.

His most notable innovation, the West Coast offense, endured well beyond his own tenure, and innovations like scripted plays remain today, since he filled the NFL with protégés as his own mentors, Paul Brown and Al Davis, did for him and his contemporaries. He's on more short lists than we can reasonably count....

...Raiders owner Al Davis and Hall of Famer John Madden stopped by to see Walsh on Saturday, and Montana on Friday and also last Wednesday along with Ronnie Lott. Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young was headed to see Walsh on Monday when he received the sad news instead.

"He knew me well before I knew myself and knew what I could accomplish well before I knew that I could accomplish it," Young said. "That's a coach. That's the ultimate talent anyone could have. I said in my Hall of Fame speech that he was the most important person in football in the last 25 years, and I don't think there's any debate about that."

...Walsh built a playbook that included short dropbacks and novel receiving routes, as well as constant repetition of every play in practice. Though it originated in Cincinnati, it became known many years later as the West Coast offense -- a name Walsh never liked or repeated, but which eventually grew to encompass his offensive philosophy and the many tweaks added by Holmgren, Shanahan and others.

...By the 1990s, much of the NFL was running some version of the West Coast offense, with its fundamental belief that the passing game can set up an effective running attack, rather than the opposite conventional wisdom.

Walsh also is widely credited with inventing or popularizing many of the modern basics of coaching, from the laminated sheets of plays held by coaches on almost every sideline, to the practice of scripting the first 15 offensive plays of a game...

steelers will win 6 games max this year.. long year for them...

but look at the 1st drive and how we shut the Saints Down. Looked real good if we continue like that!!