by Bill Walsh
Conversely, the numbers indicated that as Joe Montana was gradually worked in as our starting quarterback he was 60 percent less likely to be intercepted. (DeBerg was intercepted 5.3 percent of the time when he passed; Montana, 3.3 percent.) Additionally, Montana had established himself as our acknowledged on-field leader when he led the extraordinary comeback against New Orleans. I had identified my quarterback of the future. This was meaningful: One of the most valuable components of our future success was now in place.
Another fact that was overshadowed by our 6-10 season was the loss of Paul Hofer, one of our primary offensive threats because of his great ability to both run and catch the ball. Paul had been injured in an early-season 59-14 loss to the Dallas Cowboys and was out for the year.
I knew that he would return fully recovered for the upcoming third season and greatly complement our emerging offensive stars: Earl Cooper, a rookie running back/receiver, was second in the NFL with eighty-three catches; Dwight Clark was third with eighty-two receptions. (This explains, in part, why Joe Montana led all NFL quarterbacks with a .645 completion percentage.) You can understand why I was delighted by those important statistics found in the ruins of our “bad” second season.
The defense was a different story. It had gotten worse since I had taken over and was one of the most porous defensive units in the NFL—only two teams had given up more points during the season than the 49ers—but here again I took a long and hard look at all the evidence and information.
Early in the season we had lost one of the best athletes on our team, defensive end Dwaine Board, in a victory against the New York Jets—he was out for the year. But I knew he, like Hofer, would return in the third season and dramatically improve our defense.
Nevertheless, my search through the ruins showed that unless we added major weapons to the defensive secondary, we would never be contenders, regardless of how many points we scored. Thus, I needed to bring in talented players to dramatically improve the defensive situation. I found this talent largely in three very special individuals—one rookie and two experienced pros.
The primary advantage to a lousy season is that you get to draft early. That’s one of the reasons a highly regarded player like USC’s Ronnie Lott was available to us. Because of his great speed, power, and intelligence Lott would be able to transform our weakest position—left cornerback—into one of our strengths. He also inspired those around him with his incendiary competitiveness.
In a sense, he was an “old pro” in a rookie’s body. (Additionally, we drafted Eric Wright and Carlton Williamson, tremendous defensive players who, along with Lott, brought a new spirit—almost collegiate—to the defensive side of our team.)
Another major addition, one that gave us a seasoned player who provided leadership, was Jack Reynolds; his nickname was “Hacksaw.” You could say that Ronnie Lott had character and “Hacksaw” Reynolds was a character. Thirty-four years old when he joined us as a free agent from the Rams, Hacksaw was an All-Pro who had earned his nickname honestly.
In Jack’s senior year at the University of Tennessee, the Vols clinched the Southeastern Conference title but then lost a chance to play in the Sugar Bowl by losing to Mississippi State 38-0. Jack was so furious about the loss that he went to Kmart and bought a hacksaw and twenty blades. He then proceeded to saw his ’53 Chevy completely in half. It took a couple of days, but when he finished, Jack Reynolds had a new name. “Hacksaw” Reynolds had an insanely competitive spirit and work ethic. He became a tutor for our younger players, positioning them perfectly during games against a wide assortment of offensive alignments.
These two guys, one a top draft pick, the other a free-spirited free agent, brought quantifiable talent to weak areas of our defense as the third season of my head coaching got under way. (Six of our first seven draft picks were defensive players. You can see I was addressing what my search through the ruins had revealed.)
One other immeasurable addition early in the season turned out to be the final piece of the puzzle: Fred Dean, a terrorizing pass rush specialist, was acquired from San Diego during the fourth week of our third season because of a contract fight with Chargers owner Gene Klein. With Dean sacking quarterbacks and our greatly strengthened defensive secondary, San Francisco became a contender. (Dallas quarterback Danny White was sacked two times and “disrupted” seven times by Fred in his first game as a 49er—a 45-14 victory. Fred Dean was our sack leader for three consecutive seasons.)
And so, as I looked ahead to my third year as head coach—the year that really should have been called “Roaring Back!”—I felt the pieces were in place for a significant improvement in our 6-10 record. The Joe Mon tana-led offense seemed to be on the verge of breaking through to big-time performance—a maturing quarterback, top receivers, a strong line, and a returning running back, Paul Hofer, who was a reliable producer.
The defense, with the youth and extraordinary talent of Ronnie Lott (plus Carlton Williamson and Eric Wright) and the experienced leadership and ferocious competitiveness of Jack Reynolds (plus formidable 49er veterans such as Randy Cross, Lawrence Pillers, Jim Stuckey, and Dan Bunz), looked like it might be only a couple of years away from matching the level of our offense.
All of this could have been overlooked or misinterpreted had I been distracted by the enormity of the eight-game losing streak and 6-10 record, had I not been a good organizational archaeologist.
Every leader does year-end reviews and comes to conclusions of one sort or another. My observation is that two leaders—coaches—looking at the same information will not see the same thing. The one who’s a more skilled analyst, who digs deeper and wider, will benefit more. It is an endeavor to which I allocated as much energy as my preparation for every game and opponent.
Following my review of that second season—and the steps I subsequently put in play—I believed the San Francisco 49ers might be contenders for a championship in two or three years. What nobody, including me, could have predicted was the rate at which the talent of our squad would come together in the environment created by my Standard of Performance.
As we headed to training camp, I had no way of knowing that in my third season as head coach of the San Francisco 49ers the pieces were in place and that we would win a Super Bowl several months later. It happened in large part because of the importance I placed on archaeology as applied to our football team. (Much was made of the great San Francisco offense. However, the 49er defense was spectacular and came “roaring back” from near worst in the NFL to second best.)
In planning for a successful future, the past can show you how to get there. Too often we avert our gaze when that past is unpleasant. We don’t want to go there again, even though it contains the road map to a bright future. How good are you at looking through the evidence from the past—especially the recent past? There’s a certain knack to it, but basically it requires a keen eye for analysis, a commonsense mind for parsing evidence that offers clues to why things went as they did—both good and bad. And, of course, it often requires a strong stomach, because what you’re rummaging through may include not only achievements but the remains of a very painful professional fiasco.
THE WALSH WAY
The Problem Solver
Mike White, Assistant Coach, San Francisco 49ers
What Bill Walsh did is easy to describe: (1) He could identify problems that needed to be solved; and (2) He could solve them.
Pretty straightforward, right? But the magnitude and range of his problem-solving ability was pretty spectacular, especially when coupled with an amazing capacity to understand all aspects of a football organization—what people were supposed to do individually and as part of a team and how to integrate those two components so that the whole was more than the sum of its parts.
For example, he knew that organizations have leaders within, not just one leader, the CEO or head coach, but interior leaders who make possible or prevent what the guy in charge is trying to accomplish. In football they’re cal
led locker-room leaders, and ultimately they play a major role in creating the culture of the team—instilling either a positive or negative mindset. Every organization has them, influential people who’ve got your back—or are putting a knife in it.
Bill understood that at one end of the scale there were locker-room leaders who were positive and supportive and at the other end influential players who were very negative. Most important, he understood that all the guys in the middle could go one way or the other; they were up for grabs.
He began addressing the issue immediately when he arrived through simple math: addition and subtraction—retaining and adding talented personnel who were ready and willing to get on board with his program, “subtracting” (i.e., firing) those who were negative. But here was the tough part: Some of his most talented players were among the dissenters; on paper, at least, their talent held the key to our future.
Bill was smart enough, strong-willed enough, to get rid of talented people if they were contributors to a negative organizational culture—not team players. Those he allowed to remain he allowed to thrive—letting guys like Joe Montana and Ronnie Lott influence others in their own positive and individual ways without Bill telling them how they should do it.
He understood the power of the culture—the mindset of people in an organization—and recognized that changing the San Francisco 49er culture was paramount because it was so toxic. Here’s how crazy and chaotic things were the year prior to his arrival.
One head coach (briefly), Pete McCulley, was from the East Coast, and when he came to San Francisco to take over the 49ers he stayed on East Coast time—didn’t change his watch. When he told us to be at work at 7 A.M., he was talking about 7 A.M. on the East Coast! That’s 4 A.M. in California. It was unbelievable. I started living in a motel near our offices so I didn’t have to get up at 3 A.M. for the drive across San Francisco Bay to work. (McCulley got fired after we lost seven out of the first eight games—didn’t even have to change his watch when he went back to the East Coast.)
During one game, our linebacker coach, Dan Radakovich, a talented guy who had worked with Chuck Noll’s great Pittsburgh Steelers teams, got so upset with how San Francisco was playing that he went up into the stands and sat with his wife. He couldn’t stomach being on the sidelines with us for the rest of the game.
Our management didn’t trust anybody, locked everything up. To get to your office you needed four sets of keys—a key to get into the building, a key to go down the hall, a key to get to your office, a key to get into the bathroom. It was crazy because there was nothing to steal—the headquarters were barren.
We were a classic example of a football franchise going nowhere—no rudder, no captain, no nothing, dysfunctional top to bottom. Enter Bill Walsh, the problem solver.
Now, Bill and I had been buddies since we worked together as defensive assistants many years earlier under Marv Levy at Cal (University of California-Berkeley). Bill really had no experience at that time, and so to impress Levy he walked in and handed him his master’s thesis on defensive football that he had written at San Jose State. He was very proud of it. Marv just tossed it over on a shelf, didn’t even look at it, and told Bill to go out and start recruiting with this guy White—me. That’s how we got to know each other.
What I noticed first about Bill was not what he knew about football, but how hard he was willing to work. We put everything we had into selling Cal, which was a tough sale in those days because the students were revolting against everything and the campus looked like a war zone at times. Those were the days of the free speech movement, sex, drugs, and riots on campus.
Can you imagine trying to sell a parent on letting their talented kid come to Cal to play football when that’s what they saw in the papers? It was a tough sell, but Bill and I had some success in spite of the university’s public image that we had to overcome.
Gradually I saw his football mind appear, because he was always drawing on napkins—plays, diagrams, routes. It just came out of him naturally, spontaneously, even during meetings. When Marv was standing at the chalkboard diagramming some X’s and O’s, Bill would get up and say, “Have you thought about doing it this way?” And he’d start drawing out some complicated play he’d thought up.
Of course, this really rankled Levy, in part because Bill was supposed to be working the defensive side of things. It got to be funny because Marv was right-handed and Bill was left-handed. I remember watching them up at the blackboard together—Bill writing and Marv erasing. As fast as Bill could write something with his left hand Marv would follow next to him erasing it with his right hand. Levy wanted no help from Bill on plays. Marv Levy was not the only guy—just the first guy—along the way who failed to see the brilliance in what Bill was coming up with. Throughout his career, Bill Walsh was constantly underestimated.
Accordingly, when Bill arrived at San Francisco 49er headquarters, I didn’t see a messiah walk through the door; I didn’t see a golden touch. We were so deep in the hole, trying desperately to survive, that you could hardly look up. However, I soon began to understand his instincts and his approach.
What was so striking, especially in retrospect, was how he imagined, planned, and prepared everything. Everything. He had given every aspect of everything so much deep thought and careful planning. He had most of the answers, and what he didn’t know he quickly figured out.
This was apparent, for example, with assistant coaches like me. Talent wasn’t enough. Knowing what you needed to know was only part of his job description. Bill prized communication and understood that all the knowledge in the world meant little if you couldn’t communicate effectively. So, and this may be hard to believe, he had his coaches practice our coaching on one another. He knew you might be able to bullshit a player by blowing your whistle loudly, but you couldn’t bullshit another coach.
He would ask me to get up and “teach” my offensive techniques to a defensive coach, who would play the part of a student—a player. Bill would critique us, teach us how to communicate better and better so that the players would be more fully informed. No other coach in the NFL was coaching his coaches like this. And it was serious business with him.
By his sheer will, he got us analyzing what we did and how to express what we wanted to convey. You couldn’t fake it with him. There was no going through the motions of blow the whistle, run, tackle, now do it again. It had to be very well thought out, totally defined in our minds. To that end, he encouraged us to go out and give speeches to local groups like Rotary or Kiwanis, knowing it would make us think even harder about what we were saying and how we were saying it. He also knew it was good public relations.
He brought in very good coaches and taught us how to be great coaches. Maybe that explains why so many of his assistants eventually became head coaches in their own right. In the history of coaching, nobody’s had more of his assistant coaches—first- and second-generation—go on to head coaching positions.
Bill forced us to think at a higher level, which was the starting point for getting players to play at a higher level and the organization to operate at a higher level. That was his total focus, like an obsession. All he talked about was improvement. And he knew how to teach improvement.
Maybe you can’t ultimately explain greatness—the kind Bill Walsh had—but let me offer this observation. He had a brilliant mind for football, and from the start back at Washington High School, where he was a head coach, Bill had been studiously preparing himself for the opportunity he was finally given at San Francisco—learning and thinking at every single step. When Eddie DeBartolo called him with the offer to become head coach of an NFL franchise, Bill knew he was ready and believed his system would work.
Because of that belief, he had the discipline to stay with it even when things were bad. That’s not to say he didn’t have his rough patches, because he was very insecure and took some knocks that shook his belief in himself. Listen to this: After his seventh or eighth year—I had moved on to a
head coaching position by then—he got so down and depressed he called me up to see if I had any interest in taking over as head coach of the 49ers so he could concentrate on executive duties. And he meant it; he was ready to go to DeBartolo and talk him into letting me take over as head coach. I declined, and soon after that, Bill was back on his horse and into the fray.
On the field he was advanced. He conducted practice at a fast tempo, full-throttle delivery of information with extraordinary demands for precision in execution. If you were supposed to go twelve yards and you added an extra half yard, it was a big deal. You heard about it in no uncertain terms. Accuracy, accuracy, precision in execution of everything at all levels. No sloppiness. Game-level focus was the price of admission.
Obviously, the physical component is huge in football, but what Bill did was make the mental component even bigger. He taught what he wanted done, and he was a great teacher. He taught players, he taught coaches, he taught staff, he taught, taught, taught. And in that teaching he created belief in ourselves as a team, an organization, because it was apparent that what he was teaching was not only absolutely right, it was advanced. He cleared the deadwood dissenters out and taught the rest of us what it took to get the job done at the highest level.
I would tell you this: Bill’s gift for teaching created belief in him, conviction in us. Bill Walsh was the consummate teacher. With the naysayers gone, he had a team of talented people who were ready and willing to be led to the promised land.
PART III
Fundamentals of Leadership: Concepts, Conceits, and Conclusions
“I Am the Leader!”
Someone will declare, “I am the leader!” and expect everyone to get in line and follow him or her to the gates of heaven or hell. My experience is that it doesn’t happen that way. Unless you’re a guard on a chain gang, others follow you based on the quality of your actions rather than the magnitude of your declarations. It’s like announcing, “I am rich!” when you’re broke. After your announcement, you’re still broke, and everybody knows it. In a sense, Barry Switzer found this out in Dallas with the Cowboys when he took over.
