The Score Takes Care of Itself (33 page)

When I read this critic’s analysis of me, it hurt. Not because he was right, but because tens of thousands of his readers would accept his misguided evidence as proof and his opinion as fact: “Bill Walsh is a most stupid coach.”

If you care about how you’re perceived by others, including the public, it’s good to remember the following: Criticism—both deserved and undeserved—is part of the territory when you’re the one calling the shots. Ignore the undeserved; learn from the deserved; lick your wounds and move on.

Sometimes you can’t have the last word.

There’s a certain amount of “larceny” that goes on with competition—gamesmanship both intentional and unintentional. Whether you’re pro-active or reactive, how you deal with it can affect the outcome in sports or elsewhere.

For example, the week prior to each of our first three Super Bowl appearances, a key 49er receiver came down with an unexpected injury—a legitimate but not debilitating one. I understood the media frenzy that goes along with a world championship Super Bowl game and the desperate need of the media to supply all kinds of “news,” including gossip, conjecture, and rumor. Of course, an injury to a primary receiver in a pass-oriented offense like ours becomes very big news.

One year it was Freddie Solomon, who twisted his knee in practice. I said publicly he could miss the game because of it.
Could
he miss the game? Yes, it was a possibility, but an unlikely possibility.

All I cared about was the Bengals reading the injury report about Freddie and wondering whether or not he was going to play. I was hoping it might upset their preparation slightly, make them prepare for what we might do without our star receiver, perhaps get overly confident that they had an advantage going into the game. I was using a little gamesmanship.

In Super Bowl XIX the same sort of thing happened with Dwight Clark—a sprained ligament. Then in Super Bowl XXIII it was Jerry Rice, who came to me after a practice at Joe Robbie Stadium in Miami and said, “Bill, my hamstring is really tight. I hope it doesn’t get any worse.” That’s all I needed to put him on the questionable list and express my concern publicly about his being fully recovered in time for the kickoff.

In duly reporting the status of these top receivers to the media—always with the look of a graveside preacher—I knew the story would get blown out of proportion as it worked its way through the news process: “Will San Francisco’s offense sputter if Solomon (or Dwight Clark) can’t play?” “Can the 49ers win with a hobbled Jerry Rice?” These and scores of variations would dominate the sports news for at least twenty-four hours, because this kind of story is like catnip to the media.

I was taking the “rules” right to the edge, flirting, going as far as I could legitimately go. And of course, other than those who were somewhat naive, I think all of us did it. You use the resources and remedies that are available within the boundaries of the law.

Seeing the story evolve from an update on a player’s condition to the center of a media storm was predictable and somewhat amusing. I also recognized that opposing players and coaches would perhaps read or hear the “news” and tend to be distracted as they evaluated any potential advantage to be gained. It takes tremendous discipline to avoid this kind of speculation.

As a result, I constantly warned our own players to ignore any and all media “updates” coming out of an opponent’s camp or anywhere else. If the papers reported that the entire opposing team had gotten the flu and been rushed to a local hospital in a Mayflower van, I didn’t want us to be distracted by it; I didn’t want us to speculate on anything other than the assumption that the Dolphins, Bengals, or anyone else would be 100 percent ready to go at game time. All else is usually thinly sliced baloney, which can take away from the intense concentration needed to achieve maximum results.

A similar kind of distraction crops up in business. A sales representative will learn that a competitor has just reduced the price on a competing product or introduced a new feature that may offer a significant benefit; an individual will hear that someone is being groomed to replace him or her or that a much desired promotion is going to someone else (exactly the same situation many players and coaches face every day of their professional lives).

True or false, these rumors can cause great uncertainty and create a distraction that can grow into anxiety and fear. In a worst-case scenario in sports, it can be crushing to a player and even lead to his professional demise because his self-distraction leads to plummeting performance. Even superstars—franchise players—such as Steve Young and Joe Montana heard occasional rumors and undercurrents that they were going to be traded. Both were subject to uncertainty and the embarrassment a trade would bring to them when, in fact, neither one was seriously being offered for trade during his peak years with the 49ers.

The fact is that I was in a continuous dialogue with other teams about trades, or, at times, exploring trades without even being serious—throwing out the name of one player in hopes that the other side would express interest in a player I wasn’t offering. I was just throwing the bait out, hoping the other side would come back and express interest in someone else: “We don’t want this one, but we will take that guy.” This gave us information as to the level of interest the opposing partner in the trade talks had.

In fact, I offered to trade Joe and Steve at various times knowing it would get the attention of the team I was talking to—hoping I could move them to another player off that opener. During all of this, I was careful to reassure those players whose names were offered that nothing was in the works. I suspect that my comforting words provided little comfort—football is a game that induces paranoia.

In all cases, I emphasized to the people in our organization that their response to rumors, gossip, and hearsay should be the same: Focus only on doing your best to maintain and improve your level of performance; concern yourself only with that which you can control, and you can’t control rumors. Ignore thinly sliced baloney.

The surprise tactic has its place—very limited—in any competitive endeavor. However, I believe surprise for the sake of surprise is often a trap. There’s a mistaken mentality, a kind of thinking that leads you to a faulty conclusion: “They won’t expect us to do
this
.” It’s very dramatic but often reveals recklessness—“Let’s try it. No one will ever anticipate it.”

The media glorified this attitude in movies such as
The Great Escape
: “They’ll never expect us to do it in broad daylight,” or something to that effect. That idea—“nobody will expect it”—is grossly overrated and often the manifestation of poor strategic planning. Surprise is often simply a default device, something in lieu of strong thinking. Innovation is something else.

Innovation—according to the dictionary, “to advance or improve”—is an intrinsic part of achieving dominance in a given profession. In my own work, it was innovation regarding the use of the forward pass that led directly to a breakthrough in performance results. What our team did, though innovative, was usually not based on surprise tactics, although opposing teams were often surprised by the complexity of what they faced.

Innovation that works is based on solid integral logic and applied performance.
Calculated
risks are part of what you do, but the idea that something completely crazy will work just because it’s completely crazy is completely crazy. It fails dramatically more often than it succeeds, but when it does succeed you’re tempted to do it again, and that’s when you get caught. By taking a reckless approach you think you’ll fool people. You hear commentators talking about it: “They really caught ’em with that one,” or “They never expected that.” It’s glorified, just like in the movies.

The principle of assuming the other person is unprepared, believing the competition will not adjust or is inflexible, or being convinced you can just outsmart the opposition with the element of surprise, is bad. In football terms, it’s comparable to running a reverse on third-and-goal, thinking, “They’ll never expect it.” That’s poor logic.

If it works, that might be the worst thing that can happen, because you’ll be tempted to make other equally ill-advised and risky decisions. High-risk decisions are very necessary at times but should not be an ongoing course of action. Finding yourself in a position where you believe your only option is to pull off a big surprise often means you haven’t prepared, haven’t done your homework. The “big surprise” option eases the internal pressure to come up with solid planning and preparation that can force your opponent to resort to high-risk options.

I preferred the position of being able to take lower-risk actions with higher reward potential. That sounds like a situation that rarely exists—low risk, high reward—but it’s exactly what my pass-oriented, ball-control system offered on the majority of our plays. In order to make it work, I applied great energy and expertise to a methodical process of anticipating, planning, and practicing for every conceivable situation.

This sounds rather easy, but we both know that “walking the walk” is harder than “talking the talk.” Just “talking about it” will too often put you in the position where your only option is the element of surprise.

My stated philosophy as head coach was that the person in our organization best suited for a specific job should be the person heading it up or doing it. The best play caller should be calling plays, the best offensive coordinator should be coordinating the offense, and so on. That was my theory, but not my practice.

Somehow in my mind I believed that I was the best qualified to do almost every job, especially when it came to the offensive part of our game. In one sense, it stemmed from confidence; I was absolutely sure that if I did the job it would not get screwed up. Well, that can only take you so far. Pretty soon you’re on overload while very talented people in the organization are being underutilized.

For example, Mike Holmgren, a superb assistant coach who eventually won a Super Bowl while head coach of the Green Bay Packers, was on my staff and could have taken on much more responsibility than I gave him. (The year immediately following my retirement, the 49ers won Super Bowl XXIV against the Denver Broncos 55-10, an all-time scoring record. Mike was calling the plays.)

There were others, too, on my staff who were able and willing to take on more responsibilities.
They
were willing; I was reluctant, even unwilling—unable is perhaps more accurate. Of the various failures I cite myself for, one of the most problematic may have been my inability to delegate to the extent I could, and should, have. Increasingly, I continued to take on massive responsibilities. I appeared to be in full control—and I think I was—but the exhaustion I experienced, the track I was on, offered no escape. I couldn’t take a real vacation because there was always more and more to do, and I felt, rightly or wrongly, that Bill Walsh was the one best able to handle too many of the various responsibilities. Well, that kind of thinking can only take you so far. Eventually, you’re working seven days a week, sixteen hours a day with little good sleep, eating poorly, and dealing with all kinds of forces. You burn your energy like an acetylene torch until your nerves are completely stretched and then virtually destroyed. It took me years to figure this out, to learn it, to understand it. By then I was no longer head coach of the San Francisco 49ers.

You may suspect you need to be delegating more, but you can’t bring yourself to do it; you can’t summon in yourself a trust in others whose talent you respected enough to hire them. I should have had more of a plan or commitment to move other people into different roles and to let them emerge, to loosen my grip on control, but I couldn’t, and the exhaustion I experienced, the track I was on, was partially the direct result of not being able to delegate more intelligently.

There was always something to do, and I was the one most capable of doing it—or so I thought.

Thomas Henderson was not only one of the best linebackers in NFL history, but a very intelligent man—one of the great athletes to play the game. He was also one of the most flamboyant during his years with the Dallas Cowboys. His nickname was appropriate: “Hollywood.”

Unfortunately, by the time he joined the 49ers during my first year as head coach, a more apt moniker would have been “Cocaine” Henderson, because he was a serious addict whose life was coming apart.

In fact, when my wife, Geri, and I had Thomas and his wife, Wyetta, over for dinner at our home in Menlo Park, California, shortly before he officially joined San Francisco, he excused himself briefly while the apple pie and ice cream were being served. Later, I discovered he had gone into our bathroom to snort cocaine.

I was aware that Thomas had become somewhat difficult during his final years with Tom Landry’s Cowboys—violating curfews, breaking dress code rules, increasingly contentious and criticizing the coaching staff, even mugging on the sidelines for the television cameras—but I thought that with my supposed ability to work with problem players, I could get him back on track. Plus, in that first year as head coach, I was desperate for talent—especially on our defensive team.

However, it soon became evident that my abilities were no match for the destructive power of Henderson’s addiction. (In fact, in those days most coaches were ignorant when it came to hard drug use among players. The most common drug being abused was alcohol. When a player had a problem with it, the symptoms were evident the next day—a big hangover. The cure was simple: Work him hard and make him suffer. Throwing up over on the sidelines in ninety-degree heat usually solved the problem for a while. Cocaine was much more insidious.)