Mike Shanahan never coached under Bill Walsh. But through three seasons on the San Francisco 49ers’ coaching staff under former Walsh lieutenant George Seifert, he absorbed everything he could about Walsh’s football philosophy and his teachings to players and coaches during a wildly successful 10-year run on the San Francisco sideline.

“Being part of San Francisco and going in there and studying tapes of his meetings for 10 years and being a part of that organization, I feel that I am a part of it,” Shanahan said, “because I took a lot of pieces from that offense and utilized them in our system.”

The quick passes, the zone blocking, the use of creative and ever-changing formations … those are key tenets of Broncos offensive football in the last 12 years, and many of them found their genesis in Walsh’s ground-breaking offensive scheme. His innovations were so revolutionary that they changed the way the game is played. You can scarcely turn on a football game on either the pro or college level and not see the perpetual harvest of Walsh’s fertile mind.

More than anything else, that is Walsh’s legacy on the sport he so dearly loved, and that is why the entire NFL pauses to mourn the loss of the Hall of Famer, who passed away Monday morning of leukemia at the age of 75.

But being a premier strategist was only a building block for Walsh. It took something more for Walsh to become a legendary coach.

“He was a great teacher,” Shanahan said. “reat coaches are great teachers — people that enjoy teaching. It doesn’t matter what level it was on. I don’t care if it’s teaching high-school quarterbacks three- to five-step drops, college kids, pro kids, he enjoyed it, and he was very good at it. Very smart.

“I guess the best way to describe him (is) that he just had passion for everything he did. That was one of the reasons he was so successful.”

But for one Sunday in November 1988, Shanahan got the better of Walsh. It was Shanahan’s first season as the Los Angeles Raiders’ head coach, and his team turned back the 49ers 9-3. Walsh would only lose one more game as an NFL coach — an inconsequential regular-season finale against the Los Angeles Rams.

“They went on to win the Super Bowl, and obviously we didn’t do very well, but as a young coach coming in to actually find a way to win against a coach like Bill Walsh was a dream come true,” Shanahan said. “Bill was in the league as a head coach for just 10 years, but three Super Bowls and 10 wins in that time — a very impressive person.”

And one that Shanahan kept in his life for the 19 years that followed. The two spoke at length about football, coaching and life, picking up a conversation that lasted for years.

The two talked in recent weeks. Walsh, whose intellect and pragmatism set him apart from many other coaches of his generation, knew the end was near after a gallant, lengthy struggle through which he continued to work.

“He was going through a very tough time. He knew it was just a matter of time,” Shanahan said. “It’s a really, really sad day.”

But it is also a day to remember one of the titans of the game — a titan who himself once worked under Paul Brown before being passed over by the Cincinnati Bengals when it came time to choose a successor. From Walsh to Shanahan, and to coaches like Gary Kubiak, Tim Brewster and Troy Calhoun who came of age under Shanahan’s watch, the chain of innovation and imagination for the game remains unbroken.

Walsh may be gone, but with a new generation using his methodology, he is not a part of football’s past — he is an integral component of its present, and its future.

“When you have a West Coast offense, you’re going back to Bill Walsh,” Shanahan said, “and he’s the one that started it.”

Tags: Bill Walsh, Mike Shanahan

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