San Francisco 49ers Takes On Seattle Seahawks Tonight - Without Nolan

The San Francisco 49ers take on the Seattle Seahawks supposedly without Head Coach Mike Nolan, who lost his father, Dick Nolan, Sunday.

Wait. This just in - Nolan will coach this evening.

Dick Nolan - Coaching Legend of Cowboys, 49ers, and New Orleans Saints Passes Away at 75

Former 49ers, Saints coach Dick Nolan dies at 75 - Canadian News

SAN FRANCISCO - Dick Nolan, the former coach of the San Francisco 49ers and the father of current coach Mike Nolan, died Sunday, the 49ers said. He was 75.
Dick Nolan, a former NFL defensive back who also coached the New Orleans Saints, had been in declining health with Alzheimer's disease and prostate cancer for several years. He spent the last few months at an assisted-care facility in the Dallas area, near his longtime home with his wife, Ann.
Mike Nolan missed practice with the 49ers on Friday and Saturday, travelling back to Texas to be with his father. Team spokesman Aaron Salkin said Nolan would coach the 49ers on Monday night against the Seattle Seahawks.
Dick Nolan played nine NFL seasons before becoming a coach, assisting Hall of Famer Tom Landry in Dallas and going 71-85-3 in nearly 11 seasons with San Francisco and New Orleans. He led the perennially downtrodden 49ers to 56 wins, three division titles and two conference championship games in eight years with the club.
Dick and Mike Nolan were just the fifth father and son to become NFL head coaches, and the first to coach the same team since Bum and Wade Phillips both coached the Saints.
Mike Nolan convinced the NFL to allow him to wear dress suits on the 49ers' sideline last season partly in tribute to his father, who always dressed smartly.
"My father always projected an image of authority, and I wanted to honour him - the way he lived his life and his whole career as a coach," Mike Nolan said.
Born in Pittsburgh and raised in White Plains, N.Y., Dick Nolan played college football at Maryland and went on to a playing NFL career with the New York Giants, Chicago Cardinals and Dallas Cowboys, mostly as a hard-hitting safety.
"He made himself into not just a good player, he was an extraordinary player," former teammate Frank Gifford told the New York Daily News earlier this year. "He didn't have the physical talent to do it all. He just willed himself. He was smart. He was tough - as good as there comes in that respect."
After retiring in 1962, Nolan spent six seasons as an assistant to Landry, his longtime friend and former teammate with the Giants. The 49ers hired him in 1968 to take over a franchise that had made just one playoff appearance in its 18 NFL seasons.
San Francisco went 7-6-1 in his first season before breaking through in 1970, going 10-3-1 and getting the 49ers' first playoff win at Minnesota before falling to Dallas in the NFC title game.
The 49ers made playoff appearances in 1971 and 1972, losing to the Cowboys both times. Nolan was in charge when the 49ers moved from Kezar Stadium near the Haight-Ashbury district to Candlestick Park on the shores of San Francisco Bay.
But the 49ers slumped to three consecutive losing seasons after their playoff appearances, and the same fans who once hailed Nolan as their saviour booed the Niners and cheered for Nolan's departure.
"That was the toughest time, but that's the life of a coach," Mike Nolan said. "My dad never took it personally, and he didn't take it personally when it happened again in New Orleans."
Nolan then coached the Saints from 1978-80, going 15-29 with the perennially downtrodden franchise, which fired him after the Saints lost the first 12 games of the 1980 season.
Nolan scouted and enjoyed retirement before his health worsened. In his final months, he was visited by many of his former players. In September, 49ers Hall of Famers Dave Wilcox and Jimmy Johnson joined Len Rohde and Ed Beard for an afternoon of reminiscing - and Nolan recognized them.
"My father kind of lit up when he saw them, and he doesn't do that very often," Mike Nolan said.
Nolan is survived by his wife and six children. Funeral arrangements are pending.

NFL Agent Ed Goines - From 49ers Lawyer To Player Agent

For five years, Ed Goines was the Senior Vice President of Legal and Business Affairs for the San Francisco 49ers. Now, Ed Goines has stepped over the line to become an Official NFL Players Association Contract Advisor, otherwise known as NFL Agent.

For Ed, it's a logical step. "I have corporate sponsor contacts, and know how the team organization works. I can see the player deal from both the players and the team's perspective. As the 49ers point person for business affairs I was responsible for sponsorship deals and contract structure, and have already worked with many NFL executives."

Ed also has an online show called "Ed Goines On Sports." You can check out his take on the business of sports there and contact him at 415-407-0882.

S.I.'s Michael Silver On Bill Walsh's Genius - The Passing Of Bill Walsh

Early in his coaching tenure with the San Francisco 49ers, before he turned a long-suffering franchise into the greatest organization in professional sports, Bill Walsh once cut a player on the practice field.

Enraged by a cheap shot, Walsh fired the player -- who, to be fair, was not one of the team's major contributors -- right there on the spot, ordering a member of the security staff to escort him out of the building. To underscore his point, Walsh trailed behind as the two men trudged toward the locker room, screaming, "Don't even let him f----- shower!"

This was Walsh, who died today at 75 after a long bout with leukemia, at his most ruthless. Yet there was a calculated brilliance behind his brashness: After he took over in 1979, no Niner dared cross the new man in charge.

Nearly a decade later, as he was losing his grip after having completed the most impressive NFL coaching run since Vince Lombardi's in Green Bay, Walsh sometimes directed his enmity toward members of the local media. He was equal parts paranoid and condescending, and when he stepped down following his third Super Bowl title in January 1989, there wasn't a whole lot of sentimental sadness in either the press room or the locker room.

A few months later, I began covering the team as a beat writer for a Northern California paper, and the horror stories about Walsh's final days circulated with abandon. But he and I hit it off from the start, and over the next 17-plus years, whether I sought his opinion as a television analyst, as the progenitor of an offensive philosophy and unmatched tree of executive and coaching excellence, as a reinstalled Stanford mentor who'd just toyed with Joe Paterno, or a personnel guru who temporarily brought the 49ers back to prominence, he was invariably wise, witty and kind.

When people would ask about my relationship with the white-haired legend, I used to respond jokingly -- well, maybe half-jokingly -- that he and I bonded based on our shared belief of an unassailable tenet: Bill Walsh was a genius.

It wasn't that far from the truth. Growing up in L.A. as an oft-humiliated fan of the hometown Rams' chief rivals, I spent my high-school years watching in awe as Walsh transformed a 49ers team that went 2-14 his first year and 6-10 his second into a first-time champion in his third.

Because of Walsh, the franchise of a thousand choke jobs was now led by a cool, magical quarterback named Joe Montana, whose passes were as picturesque as the Golden Gate Bridge in heavy fog.

Because of Walsh, a group of young hellions led by Ronnie Lott took over a malleable defense that suddenly played with dash and defiance.

Because of Walsh and his innovative offensive schemes, receivers were five yards open, a 10th-round draft pick named Dwight Clark would become an All-Pro and Bay Area legend, and a washed-up running back named Lenvil Elliott would gain many of the key yards on the dramatic drive that produced The Catch.

On a more personal level, because of Walsh, I could wear my ratty, way-too-small 49ers jersey to school on Jan. 11, 1982, and for the first time in my life no one would dare laugh.

So, yes, after I started covering the Niners and thus stopped loving them like a gushy teenager, I was predisposed to think pretty highly of Walsh. But the more I learned of him -- and from him -- the greater my appreciation became.

In an era in which many head coaches callously prohibit their assistants from talking to the media (and, by extension, hurt their profiles and potential for attracting the interests of other employers), Walsh did the opposite, vigorously promoting the virtues of the coaches who worked under him through the press and back-channel diplomacy. This was especially true when it came to minority coaching candidates. Indeed, undoing racial injustices when it came to such hires remained one of Walsh's primary causes long after he stepped away.

Remember that in early January 1989, shortly before Walsh resigned as the Niners' coach, his receivers coach, Denny Green, got the Stanford job -- largely on the strength of his boss's recommendation. Walsh's reaction in the midst of a tense playoff drive? He essentially allowed Green to become the Cardinal's fulltime coach while filling in with the Niners whenever time allowed.

It's not surprising that, unlike Jimmy Johnson and other successful NFL head coaches whose assistants turned out to be substandard bosses, Walsh saw his legacy carried on directly (George Seifert, Mike Holmgren, Ray Rhodes, Green) and indirectly (Mike Shanahan, Jeff Fisher, Jon Gruden). It was Walsh, after all, who not only revolutionized football strategy with the West Coast Offense, but who also created the organizational blueprint for the modern franchise, from the down-to-the-precise-minute daily schedule to the filming of practices and play-installation meetings.

Give me an hour, and I can go on and on about the other areas in which Walsh made a lasting impact, including his insistence on cutting prominent players a year before their decline, rather than after it, all things being equal. Critics might call this another example of his ruthlessness, and some victims of the policy, such as Clark, would hold a longtime grudge.

But if you paid attention to the 49ers, you eventually understood that Walsh knew best, for he -- more than even Lott or Montana or Jerry Rice or owner Eddie DeBartolo -- was the man most responsible for the franchise's unprecedented run of excellence that included five Super Bowl championships in 14 years.

Manipulative as he might have been -- like all great coaches, really -- Walsh boldly strove for excellence and wasn't averse to risking everything while doing so. Every move he made was meant to create or sustain a dynasty, from the 1987 trade for Steve Young, that triggered a years-long quarterback controversy, to his persuading of Montana, Clark and other veterans not to cross the picket line during the '87 players' strike for fear of the damage to team chemistry it might cause (they nonetheless returned the following week).

As that strike reminded us, Walsh was a tactician whose brilliance shone behind-the-scenes and, most glaringly, on Sundays in front of a rapt, football-watching nation.

Playing his first game with replacement players against the Bill Parcells-coached Giants on Monday Night Football, Walsh, during interviews with the New York media, made a big deal about the presence on the roster of backup quarterback Mark Stevens, who'd run the option in college. Stevens, Walsh suggested, might be inserted in specific situations in which the Phony Niners could utilize his speed and running ability.

Sure enough, before a short-yardage play near midfield, Stevens came sprinting into the huddle, and everyone waited to see Walsh unveil his new toy. The bait successfully lowered, Stevens took the snap, faked a handoff, dropped back in the pocket and calmly delivered a touchdown pass to a wide-open receiver.

On one level, the whole thing was kind of coldblooded. It was also funny and sublime and, yes, genius. That was Bill Walsh, and those of us who got to observe him up close will remember him that way until we, too, are told to disappear without showering.

Something To Share About Coach Bill Walsh - Zennie Abraham

I only met Coach Walsh three times, and on every occasion he always referred to me as "Lenny" rather than "Zennie" but he never refused to take time to talk to me about his system, and I was into the details of it, like the "hitch step" for example, which is simply the extra step a QB takes just before throwing, and the concept of throwing without a hitch step, which is hard as hell to do -- try it yourself.

The point is that he would always share.

But what really rankled me -- and still does today -- is how many people, reporters, incorrectly describe "The Walsh System." It's always "short, ball control" and left at that.

That's so wrong.

Yes, that was a part of it. But man, that wasn't even the difference. It was the way of thinking.

To illustrate how different Coach Walsh's system was, let me compare it to the Dallas Cowboys passing game concept under Coach Tom Landry.

The Cowboys were known for passing plays that essentially "pulled" a defense into a particular direction and then took advantage of how the defense deployed itself as a result.

For example, one of the most successful plays the Cowboys ran in the 70s -- when Walsh was developing his ideas -- came out of split backs or "Red or Green Formation." The Flanker went in half motion toward the tight-end, and then
released at the snap of the ball.

The play started as a "sweep" running play, with both guards pulling, the fullback lead blocking and the halfback running. Then the QB would fake a handoff to the halfback, and then look down field.

The Flanker who went in motion toward the tight end then ran a crossing pattern 15 - 20 yards. Meanwhile the Split End ran a kind of "mirror" crossing pattern. The offensive play caused both safeties in a standard Cover Two -- which is what the Pittsburgh Steelers played at the time -- to essentially go deep and move wider apart, leaving the Flanker all alone on the crossing route.

That play worked in Super Bowl X, where Drew Pearson caught a 47-yard touchdown pass. But it failed to work later in the same game because Steelers safety Mike Wagner didn't move deep. When Split End Doug Donley ran his crossing pattern, Wagner stayed home rather than move deep or follow him.

The result was an interception, which surprised Dallas QB Roger Staubach -- "It was the first time it didn't work" Staubach remarked later.

Well, let's think about it. That play was designed to throw to one -- and only one -- receiver, the Flanker. The Split End was a decoy and the tight end wasn't even a factor in the play -- the running backs were strictly used for run fakes and then forgotten about.

Coach Walsh's offense didn't have so many decoys. And in his offense, there was always another receiver to go to. It was flexible, which was new at the time. It was so new that Paul Hackett, who was Coach Walsh's QB coach and passing game student, was hired as Offensive Coordinator by the Cowboys under Landry in '83 I believe. It didn't work out because Hackett's learned idea of flexibility conflicted with the "fixed" philosophy Landry held. So Landry was an example of many
coaches who didn't "get" what Bill was doing at the time.

How would Coach Walsh have changed that play? Ha. The fullback that is the lead blocker would have ran an "up" pattern off the run block fake. The Halfback would have ran a swing pattern after the sweep fake.

The Flanker's crossing pattern would remain. The Split End would have ran a fly pattern. So the order of recever progression would have been 1) Split End, 2) Flanker, 3) Fullback, 4) Halfback (hot receiver). The key read would have been the weak (free) safety. The Split End was essentially clearing out for the Flanker, who was clearing out for the fullback.

See?

That's not just an example of how Coach Walsh would have done it, it's an example of how his way is so basic and logical that it can be shown to a guy like me, and I can repeat it with confidence.

That's a pure tribute to the man.

But what I will most miss, Ray, is Coach Walsh as a member of the Bay Area sports community -- don't forget the impact he had on the Big Game rivalry.

You know, we're blessed to be around so many great people in one area of America. What a sad day. I was at JFK Airport in New York when I got the news Monday. The plane ride home -- from CNN -- was hard, so very hard. Reading Coach Dungy's book "Quiet Strength" helped some -- a good book by a great man who -- as one might expect -- was touched
by Coach Walsh.