Gary Peterson

Once upon a time, when they were young, ambitious and had their whole professional lives ahead of them, Bill Walsh and Dick Vermeil were assistant coaches under John Ralston at Stanford University. They say the staff meetings there were almost as entertaining as the warm-up acts.

“We’d get there early,” Vermeil recalled during Super Bowl week of 2000, shortly before his St. Louis Rams defeated the Tennessee Titans. “We’d start talking about strategy, and Bill would get up and start diagramming plays on the blackboard. He’d fill up the board on one wall, then he’d start on the board on the next wall. We’d be running after him, erasing the boards, saying, ‘C’mon Bill, John’s going to be here any minute.'"

Walsh, who died of leukemia Monday, was conceptually gifted. He wasn’t so gifted at keeping his ideas to himself. For one thing, he had so many of them. For another, they were so good.

Give you an example. During his first head coaching job, at Washington Union High School in Fremont, Calif., he had the bright idea of installing a backup offensive lineman as the blocking back on short-yardage situations. Years later, as his San Francisco 49ers were charging to a Super Bowl championship, he recycled the idea. He lined Guy McIntyre in the backfield, called it the Angus formation (after McIntyre’s favorite eatery, the Black Angus), and used it to defeat the Chicago Bears in the NFC Championship game.

That’s how good Walsh was — he was 15 years ahead of himself.

But the story doesn’t end there. Put off by Walsh’s strategy, Bears coach Mike Ditka looked to get even. The next time the two teams played, Ditka mimicked Walsh’s tactic, using as a blocking back then-unheralded defensive lineman William Perry.

That’s right. The legend of The Refrigerator has Walsh’s fingerprints all over it.

You’d be hard-pressed to separate any significant moment, concept or figure in the modern NFL from Walsh’s sphere of influence. Another example: a great deal was made, and rightly so, over the meeting of two black head coaches in Super Bowl XLI. But Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith might not have been the first two black head coaches in Super Bowl history had Walsh not implemented a minority coaches fellowship during his time with the 49ers.

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The connection goes even deeper with Dungy. A modestly talented safety, he was plucked off waivers by Walsh during the 1979 preseason. He played on Walsh’s first 49ers team, which went 2-14 and produced the seedling that grew into the Walsh coaching tree.

The assistant public relations director for the 49ers that first year? A fellow named Brian Billick. You might recognize him from the Baltimore Ravens Super Bowl XXXV team photo.

Walsh had an innate ability to recognize talent both on the field (Joe Montana was a third-round draft choice; Dwight Clark was a 10th-rounder) and off. Four members of his 49ers family (Dungy, Billick, George Seifert and Mike Holmgren) won Super Bowls as head coaches. Another, Sam Wyche, lost the only Super Bowl in which he coached. In fairness to Wyche, he didn’t have much of a chance — he was coaching against Walsh.

Walsh’s most celebrated innovation, of course, was the West Coast offense. Rules changes liberalizing pass blocking and restricting pass defense in the late 1970s had set the table for a new era in offensive football. But it wasn’t until Walsh came along that anyone even considered passing to set up the run.