For those who don't follow the Niners, some of this is eye-opening stuff. Great read
http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/88...-espn-magazine
MoreTHE MOST INFLUENTIAL football coach of the past 30 years hated his legacy. He hated it from the moment he retired at age 57, in January 1989, days after winning his third Super Bowl as head coach of the 49ers. Bill Walsh had felt fried for years, and during that last season he was in "a claustrophobic panic," as a friend later described it. Or "just eking by," as his son Craig recalls. That 1988 season had been the most wrenching of his career, because the 49ers were not a great team. They were a 10-6 team that happened to win it all, and the grind swallowed Walsh to the point that he was, as his son says, "like a zombie." So he secretly decided to retire during the season, and in the whooping and wet locker room after the Super Bowl, Walsh wept alone, head in his hands. He wasn't happy. He was relieved. It was over.
That image, of course, doesn't square with the Walsh in old footage: elegant and confident, handsome and professorial, walking a damp Candlestick Park sideline in a sweater and khakis, fog-white hair neatly combed, holding a pencil to his lips as he plotted his next move, which always seemed to be two ahead of his opponent. But that's how he was. He always coached through existential torture, with alternating bouts of believing that he was brilliant and that he was incapable of fulfilling his own idea of greatness.
So it was no surprise that Walsh instantly regretted retiring. Believing that he left at least one Super Bowl on the table, Walsh was "melancholy and terrible," according to Craig. That the 1989 49ers were more dominant in the playoffs under new coach George Seifert than they ever were under Walsh made it worse. Walsh hated that Seifert won a championship that year with his team, his West Coast offense, his philosophy; he so hated the ring that the team awarded him that he gave it away. "He didn't want them to win," Craig says. "He couldn't hand over the team he had created to someone else, because he wasn't capable of it."
I have a great book on the making of the Niners Superbowl success with Walsh the builder.
What I'd love to find is a book that tells their whole story starting in 1946 when they first came into existant in the old AAFC. The Million Dollar Backfield, The Shotgun Formation, The Alley Oop Pass, Joe "The Jet" Perry, Hugh "The King" McElhenny, Leo "The Lion" Nomellini, Abe Woodson, Bob St.Clair, and on and on.
That sounds boring as
That's why you don't know anything.
The Seahawks are going to kick some Niner ass next year.
Bill Walsh was such a perfectionist that he couldn't bring himself to watch tape of Super Bowl XXIII (when the 49ers beat the Bengals on John Taylor's TD with 34 seconds left) because he was so sick over the mistakes San Francisco made in that game.
The 1980s 49ers- a perfect marriage of a great QB, a great coach and a whole lot of Youngstown mob money.
Just like the Falcons were going to kick their ass, right?
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