Free The Score Takes Care of Itself by Bill Walsh Page A

organization. In football that’s tough to do when you’re not winning games. My tie was a good example. What the heck did it have to do with a Super Bowl? Bill saw the connection. It was one of the tiny things—thousands of them—that he put in place that were part of eventually winning.
    Communication within the organization was extremely important to Bill, especially between coaches and players. Even though our headquarters at 711 Nevada Street in Redwood City, California, weren’t so good, he saw the cramped offices where we were almost sitting on top of each other as an asset.
    When somebody was talking on the phone or having a conversation, everybody could hear what was going on. In a strange way, it meant that everybody on the staff was in the loop. In fact, eight years later when the DeBartolos built an ultramodern and spacious facility, Bill was very worried that it would not only create a “country club” mentality but hurt our communication process. We couldn’t hear one another’s phone calls anymore!
    Bill Walsh was not afraid of talent. He hired assistant coaches who were extremely good, and he did it with the expectation that they would move on—up to head coaching positions. And in fact, about fifteen of them did. He didn’t feel that you sold your soul to the company store. While you were a 49er, you were expected to give it your all, but Bill was very enlightened in the way he supported the lives and careers of employees beyond just what they could do for his team.
    One thing that truly amazed me was his eye for talent when it came to football players. It was a gift that is hard to explain or overstate. He could see what others couldn’t spot. Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, Steve Young, and more are among superstar Hall of Fame NFL players who didn’t have a line of people knocking on their doors when Bill came calling. He was uncanny in that way.
    Here’s a good example. Early in Bill’s coaching at San Francisco, he was desperate for good players and would hold tryouts for anybody and everybody. We had truck drivers coming in with high-top work shoes; big bruisers from local bars tried out. We were so lean on talent that Bill gave everybody a look.
    One day it was ninety degrees and we had over a hundred prospects on the field going through the workout, trying to make the team, and I was standing up on the fire escape platform with Bill looking over this herd of guys. He said to me, “John, who’s that blond kid down there?” At first I couldn’t even tell who he was talking about. He pointed again: “Him, that kid over there with blond hair.” I checked my chart. “Bill Ring,” I replied. “Sign him,” Bill said. That was the end of the discussion.
    Bill Ring gave us six productive years and helped us win Super Bowl XVI and Super Bowl XIX, even though others thought he wasn’t NFL material. Bill picked him out of a large pack of players with hardly a glance. He was simply unbelievable in the way he could spot potential in a person and then develop it.
    He was extremely precise in how he ran not only the nonfootball end of things but the on-field execution. I doubt any coach in the NFL was bringing the precision to it that Bill did—drawing up plays almost to the inch and then teaching the players to perform with that same exactness. And that Standard of Performance permeated the whole organization in people’s attitude and how they—we—did our jobs.
    Bill Walsh was ahead of the times in many ways, but there was one thing he didn’t like: He hated to fire someone. At times, he had to make brutal personnel decisions, and I think it hurt him inside knowing his action would change another person’s life, and not necessarily for the better. Consequently, when it came to firing people, he was quick to assign that task to someone by the name of John McVay.
    I saw him work himself so hard over those ten years, and the toll was increasingly terrible. It didn’t have to be. Bill just had