Many Layers to His Genius

Joe Gibbs told a story in his office the other day. It started out about Dexter Manley and humility, but it ended up saying more about Bill Walsh, beyond the cerebral professor of the sideline we solely made him out to be.

Manley had boasted he was going to clock Joe Montana in November 1986 after Montana had returned from back surgery and the Redskins were about to play the 49ers on "Monday Night Football." Walsh's braniac reputation notwithstanding, Gibbs knew what was coming next.

That night, Walsh dragged his tight end, Russ Francis, slowly across the line and had him crack-back block Manley from the blindside, which sent the Redskins' defensive end to the ground woozy. The next play, Manley was massacred again, until Gibbs watched him waddle toward the sideline, shook his head and said: "See. You keep talking, you're going to be spending more time over here than out there."

Mr. West Coast Offense had a little brawler within, a competitive nature that belied his California cool. Walsh, whom Gibbs's son, Coy, played for at Stanford, couldn't just discombobulate your defense; he could hit back, too.

"His competitiveness was something," Gibbs said. "He was going to find a way to win."

"What you saw from the outside -- that wasn't anywhere near the Bill Walsh we knew as players sometimes," said Randy Cross, former lineman turned announcer on the day his former coach died at age 75 because of complications due to leukemia. "He came across as this professorial teacher type, but there was another side to Bill Walsh. He could [curse] real well. He was very much a man's man."

If you lived your boyhood years in or around the Bay Area in the 1970s, Bill Walsh was the best thing that happened to the 49ers since John Brodie. Before Walsh, Brodie-to-Gene Washington passed for an aerial attack. After Brodie, a good year meant .500 or beating the Los Angeles Rams. By the late 1970s, the Raiders had a monopoly on the area's conscience. Al Davis had both sides of the Bay.

Walsh and Montana changed that in their third year together. The beauty of The Catch is not Montana rolling right forever. Or Dwight Clark leaping high for the miraculous touchdown grab that dumped Dallas in the NFC championship game after the 1981 season -- the day a dynasty was born. The beauty was the improvisation, Montana making something up on the fly when he couldn't find Freddie Solomon or Clark on his first and second reads. It encapsulated the perfect marriage of a neophyte coach and a gifted young quarterback, a relationship that enhanced the reputation of each and won three Super Bowls.

Walsh's genius couldn't be found merely in his playbook; Walsh believed in the talent, smarts and the instincts of the people around him. He was indeed a cutting protest to the Lombardi smash-mouth school, an intellectual force in an often-blockheaded world.

"Part of his genius was taking advantage of the NFL macho-man, testosterone-laden image," Cross said by telephone from his home. He spent 10 years under Walsh. "In simpler terms, he never used a sledgehammer where a ball-peen hammer would do. Bill never believed in overkill. He taught you you could win with subtlety."

"If you ask people what they remember Bill Walsh as, how do quantify that?" Cross added. "Was he the one of the best play-callers ever, the best X's and O's coaches ever, did he have one of the best eyes for talent? Was it his organizational skills that teams mimic today? Or do you remember him as the man who basically started the minority coaches' program? There are so many layers and versions of what he will be remembered for. He was such a complex guy, but no less complex than his legacy."

On the day Walsh died, Montana called him the most influential man in his life after his father.

Walsh created the Minority Coaching Fellowship program in 1987, which was later co-opted by the league. It's where Ray Brown last saw Walsh in the summer of 2006. Before he decided to join the Redskins' staff after his retirement as a player, Brown attended an NFL leadership seminar at Stanford. Brown hadn't heard the news when he picked up the telephone yesterday. "Geez, I was thinking of getting out there and seeing him," the former offensive lineman said, ruefully. Brown played six seasons with the 49ers, part of which encompassed Walsh's role as a consultant with the team. He knew his transition from Washington to San Francisco's system was complete when Walsh pulled him aside one day.

"He told me, 'You'll be all right, you're finding your way,' " Brown said. "I thought: 'Damn, I got knighted. Bill Walsh told me I'm getting it, so I must be good.' "

Brown was in the process of getting cut from the 49ers because of salary-cap reasons when Walsh asked to have lunch with him. "I thought, 'Why in the hell does Bill want to talk to me?' I was kind of mad. I wanted to tell him I could still play."

They sat down and Walsh spoke intently about what Brown meant to the organization.

"It was a very intimate meeting in which he was just telling me, 'You're one of the best guys we had. Your tenure wasn't in vain,' " Brown said. "Which is all any player leaving wants to hear. He said: 'You'll land on your feet. There's something for you.' He even mentioned me starting a lineman camp. That he took the time as I was on my way out meant so much to me.

"I can't believe the man is gone."