Bill Walsh

Before Bill Walsh, the 49ers were a punchline. They'd gone 2 and 14 in 1978. Ten years later they had three Super Bowl trophies and an offense half the league was trying to copy. Everything we brag about as 49ers fans runs back through one guy with a clipboard and a script.

He was one of us before he was ours. Born in Los Angeles on November 30, 1931, he went to Hayward High, played quarterback at the College of San Mateo, then played end and boxed at San Jose State, where he earned his bachelor's and his master's. His first head job was at Washington High in Fremont, coaching football and swimming.

Marv Levy hired him onto the staff at Cal, then he coached at Stanford, then in 1966 he went to work for Al Davis and the Raiders. In 1968 Paul Brown brought him to the expansion Cincinnati Bengals, and that's where the thing we now call the West Coast offense was born. His quarterback, Virgil Carter, couldn't throw deep, so Walsh built a horizontal passing game of quick, short throws spread across the whole field. Carter led the league in completion percentage.

Walsh wanted Brown's job. When Brown retired after 1975 and handed it to somebody else, Walsh left, spent 1976 with the Chargers, and took over Stanford in 1977. He went 9 and 3 with a Sun Bowl win, then 8 and 4 with a Bluebonnet Bowl win, and Eddie DeBartolo came calling.

On January 10, 1979, he became head coach of the 49ers. The first year looked like the year before, 2 and 14 again. But that spring he'd drafted a Notre Dame quarterback named Joe Montana in the third round, and he was rebuilding the whole building underneath the record.

In 1980 he handed Montana the job, and on December 7 Montana brought the 49ers back from 35 to 7 down at halftime to beat the Saints 38 to 35 in overtime. A year after that, the 49ers went 13 and 3. They beat the Rams twice and the Cowboys twice, won The Catch game at Candlestick, and on January 24, 1982, beat Cincinnati 26 to 21 in Super Bowl XVI. Two years removed from two win seasons, they were champions.

He did it with paper. Walsh scripted the first 15 or so offensive plays before every game, and people started calling him The Genius. In his ten seasons the 49ers scored 3,714 points, more than any team in the league. He also kept finding Hall of Famers: Ronnie Lott, Charles Haley, Jerry Rice, and then a trade for Steve Young.

The 1984 team went 15 and 1 and beat Dan Marino's Dolphins 38 to 16 in Super Bowl XIX at Stanford Stadium, right here on the Peninsula. He was named NFL Coach of the Year in 1981 and again in 1984.

His last game was Super Bowl XXIII on January 22, 1989, against Cincinnati again, and the 49ers won it 20 to 16. Walsh resigned right after. Years later he admitted he'd left too soon. His record with us: 102 wins, 63 losses and a tie counting the playoffs, 10 and 4 in the postseason, six division titles, three titles.

He didn't stay away. He called games for NBC with Dick Enberg, came back to Stanford in 1992 and went 10 and 3 with a share of the Pac 10 title and a Blockbuster Bowl win, and later ran the 49ers front office as general manager from 1999 to 2001. In 1987 he started the Minority Coaching Fellowship, and his coaching tree reaches from George Seifert and Mike Holmgren all the way to coaches still on sidelines today.

He went into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1993. He died of leukemia at his home in Woodside on July 30, 2007. He was 75. The field at Candlestick was renamed Bill Walsh Field, and the San Jose State and Stanford game became the Bill Walsh Legacy Game.

A coach doesn't make a tackle or catch a ball, so clutch for Bill Walsh means the calls he made when the season was on the line. Ten playoff wins in fourteen tries, and three for three in Super Bowls.

Look at the drive that ended with The Catch. Dallas sat back in a prevent defense, sure the 49ers would throw, and Walsh called run after run to march down the field before Montana found Dwight Clark. He set up the most famous play in franchise history by doing what the other sideline didn't expect.

And he went out on top. His last game was a Super Bowl against Cincinnati, and the 49ers won it 20 to 16. Not many coaches get to write their own ending like that.