Farewell to Walsh
Al Davis went to see Bill Walsh Saturday night.
"Bill knew what was coming," Davis said through team executive John Herrera. "He gave us a chance to say goodbye. It was a great visit."
Walsh, hired by Davis to be offensive backs coach of the Raiders in 1966, died Monday after a battle with leukemia.
In early June, Walsh visited a Raiders minicamp practice, sitting in a golf cart with Herrera and watching the action.
Coach Lane Kiffin had asked Davis to make contact with Walsh so the two could have lunch. Kiffin went in to the meeting with plenty of questions and came away with the experience of a lifetime.
"It really was an incredible experience," Kiffin said. "We spent about an hour, an hour-and-half together, and we spent the time with Al as well. The three of us sitting together in there, and you would have never guessed (he was so ill). He was so on it, had ideas about what what we were doing in practice and everything."
Kiffin said it was the only extended conversation he ever had with Walsh.
"He already noticed some things in practice, had some different ideas and stuff," Kiffin said. "I asked him questions. He nailed everything from traveling, to quarterback reps, different things . . . to be in there with those two guys at the same time, they're telling old stories together, I'm asking questions. Bill would answer and then Al would answer. It was interesting."
At the practice preceeding the lunch, one by one, Raiders coaches and players made their way over to see Walsh.
"That was the last time I saw him," said Raiders running backs coach Tom Rathman, a Walsh draft choice in 1986 with the 49ers. "I thought he looked outstanding. I think he got some kind of infection and it took a turn for the worse. I think overall it's a big loss for the football world."
Raiders offensive coordinator Greg Knapp was a 32-year-old 49ers assistant in 1996 when Walsh returned to the franchise as a consultant and was reluctant to approach a legend. Walsh appraoched him instead.
"I was in a mode to be seen and not heard from, and he was very good about being open to whatever I wanted to do," Knapp said. "He was doing a book at the time and even asked questions about certain things, about how to put it together."
Knapp didn't hesitate to contact Walsh even when he was no longer working for the 49ers.
"When I was in Atlanta the last few years, an occasional call I would send his way just to see how he was doing," Knapp said. "I would ask for advice on coaching with a young quarterback like Mike Vick. He was very helpful and gave good direction from a career standpoint on how to manage certain individuals, certain situations. He was a good mentor for me."
At the press conference annoucing the hiring of Lane Kiffin, Davis talked of Kiffin's ability to "see the whole" in terms of offense, defense and accumulation of talent. Nobody saw "the whole" better than Walsh.
Knapp said he most admired "the foresight he had. Not only from an offensive standpoint, but an organizational standpoint. He didn’t prepare for a game, he prepared for a season. Quite often the West Coast term is thrown out there, but it’s not just about the offense, it’s how he prepared an offense and team from January to January. And how to take care of an offseason."
Ron Wolf, the personnel architect of Mike Holgmren's Green Bay teams and a former Raider executive, was in Oakland when Walsh was the offensive backs coach in 1966.
"I think the biggest thing was his willingness to learn and desire to learn, and to learn all he could about every fact of the game," Wolf said of Walsh's one year with the Raiders. "He had tremendous confidence in himself. He left that next year for the (minor league) San Jose Apaches because he wanted to run his own deal. People just didn't do that. It showed a lot of intestinal fortitude. He always had confidence in his ability."
In his lone season with the Raiders, Walsh was responsible for veteran receiver Art Powell, an explosive wide receiver with an independent streak who Davis referred to last year as "The T.O. of his time."
Powell, in an interview in 2006, said Walsh's expertise was evident as a 32-year-old assistant coach.
"I knew Bill knew what was going on," Powell said. "I don't know what the problem was, why he didn't get a head coaching job for so long. But he kept going after it. I could never understand it when Cincinnati didn't hire him as head coach. But he went to Stanford, the 49ers gave him a chance, and he showed what he could do."
"I always tell people, Joe Montana wasn't one of the top quarterbacks coming out of college. But you know who saw something? Bill Walsh saw something. And he knew what he wanted to do."
Kiffin said Walsh's imprint in the game is indelible.
"As you research how it all went together, all the way back to the Bengals, and then the Niners, so much of that is still in basic pass concepts around college and the NFL," Kiffin said. "What an unbelievable thing to put something together that people still use because most things don't last very long, and other things go in cycles and come back every 10 years or something. What he did will stay forever."
