Posts tagged BillWalsh at FanHouse

Joe Montana is unimpressed with your quarterbacks, National Football Leauge. Actually, that's not exactly true; Montana, like the rest of us, is slack-jawed watching Tom Brady rip through the league. But after learning Vinny Testaverde wasn't dead, and was currently employed by an NFL team as a starting quarterback, the Hall of Famer had some thoughts on the dearth of talent at the position.

"You're seeing a lot of things change the position because a lot of those guys in college aren't running typical pro-type offenses," Montana said. "They're spreading things out in the shotgun, and ... that doesn't translate as well to the next level.

I tell my boys, the first thing I have to do is train you to hand off, because this is not a handoff," he said, imitating the quarterback riding the ball in a running back's hands deep in the backfield. "All you're reading is from tackle to tackle, and half the time you don't even look (downfield). They're limited in their passing."

Hmm. Maybe Montana can work with Rex Grossman on improving the handoffs, because he definitely got screwed out of that lesson in college (Thanks, Steve Spurrier).

I'll say this for Buffalo's new starting quarterback, Trent Edwards: He's got a lot of big-named supporters. The late Bill Walsh loved Edwards coming out of Stanford, and now, former NFL MVP Rich Gannon has some kind words for the Bills rookie:

Gannon was in Buffalo last week for the Baltimore game, and when asked the other day by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune which young quarterback in the NFL he thought had a chance to be the next star, he replied, "Trent Edwards in Buffalo."...

"They came out against Baltimore and ran no-huddle the whole game," Gannon said. "That's not easy for a rookie to do. Trent is directing traffic at the line of scrimmage, he's getting the Bills out of bad plays and into good plays. I'm not trying to make him out as the next Tom Brady or Peyton Manning, but he's much further along than any other rookie."

I'm with Gannon: I like Edwards a lot, and think he has more upside than J.P. Losman, but let's not get too far ahead of ourselves with his performances to date. He's done an adequate job of managing the game, but he's been handcuffed by some pretty conservative play-calling and ill-timed interceptions in the Bills loss to the Cowboys, and the almost-loss to the Ravens.

Part of the Patriotgate scandal -- a part that never went anywhere -- was the accusation leveled by representatives of the Detroit Lions, Cincinnati Bengals and Jacksonville Jaguars that the communications devices they used to communicate from the press box to the quarterbacks' helmets malfunctioned when they played the Patriots at Gillette Stadium.

During a discussion of Patriotgate on ESPN tonight, Bill Parcells said that when he was coach of the Giants, the 49ers used a different tactic to achieve the same result of denying the opposition the opportunity to use headsets to communicate between the press box and the sidelines.

According to Parcells, the 49ers claimed in two different playoff games that their headsets had gone out during their first offensive series. The 49ers and coach Bill Walsh were famous for scripting the first series of every game, so headsets really wouldn't have been helpful to the 49ers during their first series -- quarterback Joe Montana and the entire offense knew exactly which plays to run whether they could hear their coaches' instructions or not.

To get you ready for week 1, FanHouse is previewing all 16 NFL games. Here is the Arizona Cardinals/San Francisco 49ers preview.

2006 Records: (Click names for 2007 preview)

Arizona Cardinals: 5-11 (4th in NFC West)
San Francisco 49ers: 7-9 (3rd in NFC West)

2006 Head-to-Head:

Week 1: Cardinals 34 - 49ers 27
Week 16: Cardinals 26 - 49ers 20

When the Cardinals have the ball: Cardinals head coach Ken Whisenhunt has made it abundantly clear that Arizona may not be the run-first offense so many people expect. Although San Francisco can expect a good dose of Edgerrin James throughout the game, it's going to be all about Matt Leinart and the seemingly endless pit of wide receiver talent.

Even with the addition of Pro Bowl cornerback Nate Clements, the 49ers can not be overly confident in their ability to contain Anquan Boldin and Larry Fitzgerald. That duo, which is arguably the best in the NFL, combined for 21 catches, 355 yards and two touchdowns against the 49ers last season.

When it comes to first-overall picks, specifically franchise quarterbacks, patience isn't a virtue most fans hold. But Alex Smith is getting ready to show 49ers Nation that good things come to those who wait.

After a less than successful start to his career (a 1-11 TD-INT ratio), Smith showed signs of improvement last season in his second year. Big things are expected of the 49ers this season, most of which belies the optimism surrounding Smith's progression, and so far the trajectory is still upwards. Last night's Monday Night Football preseason game against the Broncos was the first in the newly-renamed Bill Walsh Field, and as the San Jose Mercury News' Tim Kawakami notes, Smith is beginning to do its namesake proud.

It wasn't Joe Montana. It wasn't Steve Young. It was just a dumb exhibition in August, against a Denver defense that wasn't doing anything tricky. But this was the first game played on Bill Walsh Field, and, in the short time Smith was out there, he looked like the right guy at the right place, and he looked like he finally was realizing that himself.

Smith finished the game 4-for-5 for 58 yards, hooking up with Arnaz Battle for a 26-yard gain that landed the 49ers on the Denver one-yard line, setting up a touchdown. More importantly, he took the 49ers on two drives, both of which produced points. Smith has seen the field better this year, he's been delivering with poise and efficiency -- two things Walsh stressed.

The 49ers' success doesn't really rely on Smith -- the team proved last year it could ride the legs of Frank Gore. But a breakthrough season for the quarterback could be the difference between the 49ers being a fringe playoff team and a division champion.

As a tribute to the late coach Bill Walsh, the 49ers have announced that they will wear their cherry-red throwback jerseys in their regular season opener.

Owner John York said he pushed the league to allow the team to wear the red jerseys in the home opener as well as at another home game later in the season. The 49ers will wear a "BW" decal on their helmets all season.

A public memorial for Walsh will take place Friday at Monster Park.

Nancy Gay of the San Francisco Chronicle reports that on the public reaction to the death of Hall of Fame 49ers coach Bill Walsh, and she throws out a great idea:

Fans and admirers of Walsh are eager to see "The Genius" appropriately honored for his achievements on and off the football field.

Numerous readers have suggested the 49ers name their planned new stadium after Walsh. It's a great idea.

Except the 49ers - like every professional sports franchise trying to fund a stadium project - are banking on millions of corporate dollars gleaned from naming rights.

No, it'll never happen, but it should, and Gay overstates things a little when she says "every professional sports franchise" uses corporate bucks.

A few NFL owners have managed to avoid the lure of corporate cash: Bengals owner Mike Brown named his stadium after his father, Hall of Fame coach Paul Brown; Bills owner Ralph Wilson named his stadium after himself; Browns owner Randy Lerner sticks with the name Cleveland Browns Stadium. Naming the 49ers' new stadium after Walsh would be a wonderful tribute.

Previously on FanHouse:
From The Start, Bill Walsh Did It His Way
Bill Walsh Changed the Way We Play Football
Legendary Coach Bill Walsh Dies

FanHouse's Top Five scans the sports blogosphere for the best posts of the last 24 hours so you don't have to. Got something for this feature? Hit us up at fanhouse@googlegroups.com.

1) Yesterday was quite a day for us headline-hungry sports fanatics: not only did Kevin Garnett finally, finally get traded -- and to Boston! -- the sports world lost a true mastermind in Bill Walsh. Walsh's accomplishments (the West Coast offense; a coaching lineage to rival Moses's) are well know, but EDSBS remembered to mention one of Walsh's greatest additions to the football fan canon: College Football National Championship. Even then, Bo Jackson was unstoppable.

2) It wasn't hard to find Garnett news yesterday; news outlet after news outlet jumped in on the story (albeit with differing versions of the deal) throughout the day. But lost in all of that was the fact that CelticsBlog.com, a, you guessed it, blog about the Celtics, actually broke the news first.

3) Believe it or not, Barry Bonds might have, maybe, maybe became a Devil Ray back in the day, if the chips would have fallen ever so slightly. The Sporting Orange looked at what might have been.

4) It's the offseason, but Carnival of the NBA never rests.

5) Finally, FanHouse's own Pat Lackey had the best take on the Mark Teixeira trade anywhere on the net. Sellers market? You better believe it.

Former San Francisco 49ers head coach Bill Walsh died of leukemia today, and he's being remembered as a coach who changed the way football is played.

Walsh had a 102-63-1 coaching record and won three Super Bowls with the 49ers, but as we look back on his career, his worst season might be the one that says the most about what kind of coach he was.

Walsh took over the 49ers in 1979, and they were terrible. The team had only one big-name player, a running back on his last legs named O.J. Simpson, and the easy thing for a new coach with a roster lacking in talent would have been to give that star the ball a lot, play as conservatively as possible and hope not to lose too many blowouts.

Instead, Walsh made it clear that his offense was about passing, passing and passing some more. Walsh told his young quarterback, Steve DeBerg, to air it out all game long, and as a result DeBerg set new NFL records for attempts and completions.

The result was a 2-14 record, but the seeds had been planted for the offense that would revolutionize football. The following year Joe Montana replaced DeBerg as the starter, and the year after that the 49ers won their first Super Bowl. Walsh became one of the most influential minds in the history of football not just because he had the vision to create his offense, but because he had the guts to stick with it.

If you were to make a list of the most important people in the history of American football, at the top of that list would be the guy who invented the sport, whoever that was.

And right below him is a very small group of guys who changed it along the way, shaped and molded it to what it is now ... and Bill Walsh, dead today at the age of 75, is a part of that group.

Forget about all the championships and stats ... forget even the amazing transformation he made with the 49ers. The NFL just wouldn't look the same today if Bill Walsh hadn't come along. He changed the basic philosophy behind the way the game is played.

He was an offensive innovator, the first one to challenge the notion that you ran the ball first, and passed the ball second. Short passes were his handoffs ... dumping it off to Roger Craig, the short slant to Jerry Rice ... deadly weapons that won championships and influenced everyone else in the game.

Virtually every NFL coach since has somehow copied/borrowed/stolen/adapted the idea, to some extent ... there's a reason that the amount of respect for Bill Walsh in NFL circles is absolutely off the charts.
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