Welcome to Bill Walsh's NFL

[GunnerBill]

12 minutes ago, djp14150 said:

A question I have is with Sean Payton because he also was under Parcells 

 

He was. Although he was under Ray Rhodes first. There are a few guys who feature in both the Walsh tree and the Parcells tree as I said in the post: Payton, Daboll, Campbell being the three main ones.

[WotAGuy]

I’m working right now on the Hank Bullough bush. 

[Low Positive]

11 minutes ago, WotAGuy said:

I’m working right now on the Hank Bullough bush. 

Key Stevenson dead tree branch.

[WotAGuy]

14 minutes ago, Low Positive said:

Key Stevenson dead tree branch.

Dick Jauron twig 

[GASabresIUFan]

Does Kay Stephenson get credit for Pete Carroll who was the Bills DB coach in 1984? 

Edited yesterday at 01:17 AM by GASabresIUFan

[Jimmy Harris 69]

One Lou Saban played for Coach Brown on the Cleveland Browns of the All American Football Conference from 1946-1949. He retired from football and decided he wanted to coach like his mentor Paul Brown.

Saban beat more than 50 applicants to win the head coaching job at Case in February 1950, thanks to what the university's president called his "unusually sound knowledge of football" and his "leadership qualities". Saban "possesses the sort of personality and character that is of great value in work with young men", the president said. Saban was 28 years old at the time, and the appointment made him one of the youngest college head coaches in the country. Saban borrowed coaching techniques from Brown, alongside his version of the T formation offense.

Saban's team finished the 1950 season with four wins and four losses. By 1951, he was already under consideration for coaching jobs at bigger schools, including Indiana University and Toledo University, where he was mentioned as a "dark horse" candidate to replace former Browns teammate Don Greenwood. His Case teams compiled a 10–14–1 record during his tenure as head coach from 1950 to 1952. Saban resigned in March 1953 to become an assistant at the University of Washington under head coach John Cherberg. He spent just one year at Washington before getting a job as an assistant coach at Northwestern University, saying he wanted to return to the Midwest.

In February 1955, Saban was promoted to head coach at Northwestern, succeeding Bob Voigts and becoming the youngest coach in the Big Ten Conference at 33 years old. Saban hired George Steinbrenner as one of his assistant coaches. Saban's tenure as coach of the Northwestern Wildcats football team, however, was brief and unsuccessful. Hampered by injuries, the team lost all of its games in 1955, and calls intensified for Saban's firing as the season wore on. In December, Saban and his entire staff were fired by new athletic director Stu Holcomb. Ara Parseghian was named as his replacement.

Saban moved on to a job as head coach at Western Illinois University in 1957, where he quickly built up a successful team. The Western Illinois Leathernecks finished with a record of 6–1–1 in 1958, followed by an undefeated 9–0 season in 1959, when Saban also served as an assistant under Otto Graham in the College All-Star Game. Having built up a 20–5–1 record over three seasons as coach, Saban drew interest from the professional ranks, and the Boston Patriots of the newly formed American Football League (AFL) hired him as head coach before the circuit's inaugural season in 1960. Saban’s Patriots achieved a 5-9 record that first year, and started off 1961 2-3. Saban was fired and hired by the Buffalo Bills for the 1962 season. The rest is Bills’ lore. Two AFL championships with hall of fame players that define Buffalo in the old league. A second stint with the team in the 70’s that made OJ into——OJ. 

Edited yesterday at 04:09 AM by Jimmy Harris 69

[hondo in seattle]

I have a lot of respect for Walsh and the influence he had on the game.  But he didn't invent his offensive philosophy out of nothing.  He took Sid Gilman's ideas and evolved them.  

And I'm a little dubious of "coaching trees."   For example, John Rauch who went 7-20 as his time as a coach with the Bills and yet has an even more impressive coaching tree than Walsh.    Walsh work for Rauch so Walsh's entire tree falls under Rauch.  And Madden worked for Rauch too, so the Madden tree also belongs to Rauch. 

 

Most the coaches today can trace their tree back to Rauch - or a bunch of other coaches.  Coaches move around so much that they can all trace back coaching trees back to most any tenured coach of the 1980s.  

 

[Mr. WEO]

23 hours ago, GunnerBill said:

I was actually prompted to think about this in the odd "Reid disrespects McDermott" thread yesterday. I started thinking about the Reid tree, which is really the Holmgren tree, which is really the Bill Walsh tree.... and then I went down the rabbit hole and.... OH WOW! We are living in a Bill Walsh world. 

 

Of the 31 NFL Head Coaches currently employed only one - Mike Vrabel of the Patriots - has no link to the Bill Walsh tree. There was a time when the Walsh tree and the Parcells tree were seen as somewhat equal and while it is true that there are guys on the Walsh tree who also feature on the Parcells tree: Payton, Daboll, Campbell (and his guys) you can't get to anything like 30/31 for Parcells. This league is now fully under the influence of that lineage. Talk about leaving a legacy!

 

Anyway, the image below is my visual representation of it (apologies for image quality it wouldn't upload in higher res, will try and fix)

 

Link to clearer version of image

 

 

 

Part of this is due the overwhelmingly incestuous NFL coaching hiring  ranks-- roughly the same guys/names get churned through the league year after year, bouncing from one job to the next, then most of them getting the axe. 

 

The degrees of separation are almost nonexistent. 

[SoTier]

20 hours ago, GunnerBill said:

 

Coaching staffs were just much smaller generally.

 

Exprienced HCs frequently also wore GM hats in "the old days".   Lou Saban, Don Shula, and Bill Parcells were three who came to mind.  

 

15 hours ago, WotAGuy said:

Dick Jauron twig 

 

More like an unsprouted seed.

[The Frankish Reich]

On 1/25/2025 at 9:36 AM, Low Positive said:

Why stop at Walsh? Walsh famously worked for Paul Brown in Cincinnati for many years and developed the "West Coast Offense" there. It really should be the Ohio River Offense, but I digress. Paul Brown's coaching tree has Walsh, Don Shula, and Chuck Knoll as its main branches. Any current NFL coach can be traced back to that.

 

Good point.

There's also a good argument for tracing the whole "West Coast Offense" back to BYU and coach LaVell Edwards. 

Edwards was the Assistant at BYU who designed that offense for Virgil Carter. Paul Brown copied that when Carter took over for Greg Cook as Bengals QB.

And Edwards' direct coaching tree includes Holmgren and Andy Reid.

[reddogblitz]

On 1/25/2025 at 8:31 AM, GunnerBill said:

 

Of the five "branches" of the tree, three are sourced from offense and Seifert and Rhodes are sourced from defense. And what they both ran were 4-3 schemes that played zone coverage on early downs and then lots of heavy nickel and dime on 3rd down. I think that is pretty influential on the defenses you see in the league today. It was the basis of the 4-3 under Pete Carroll won a Superbowl with in Seattle and heavily influences a lot of the schemes you see. There is more variance on D than on O though, because there is still a strong 3-4 contingent of defensive coordinators around. 

 

Oh, so now Bill Walsh gets credit for the 4-3 defense?  The 4-3 defense was invented by Tom Landry in 1956 and everyone else (including Walsh) followed.

 

Quote

In 1956, Landry became the first defensive coordinator to switch to the 4–3 as a base defense. As the 1956 Giants won the NFL Championship, this gave the 4–3 enormous exposure, and just about the whole NFL converted to the new system the following season.

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/4–3_defense

[GunnerBill]

8 minutes ago, reddogblitz said:

 

Oh, so now Bill Walsh gets credit for the 4-3 defense?  The 4-3 defense was invented by Tom Landry in 1956 and everyone else (including Walsh) followed.

 

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/4–3_defense

 

I wasn't saying that. What I was saying was that tree isn't just influencial on offense. Some of those defenses, are still strong influences on how defense is played today. I am not suggesting that Rhodes, Seifert and Carroll were innovators on defense just that the influence of their schemes is still felt.

[Mr. WEO]

13 hours ago, hondo in seattle said:

I have a lot of respect for Walsh and the influence he had on the game.  But he didn't invent his offensive philosophy out of nothing.  He took Sid Gilman's ideas and evolved them.  

And I'm a little dubious of "coaching trees."   For example, John Rauch who went 7-20 as his time as a coach with the Bills and yet has an even more impressive coaching tree than Walsh.    Walsh work for Rauch so Walsh's entire tree falls under Rauch.  And Madden worked for Rauch too, so the Madden tree also belongs to Rauch. 

 

Most the coaches today can trace their tree back to Rauch - or a bunch of other coaches.  Coaches move around so much that they can all trace back coaching trees back to most any tenured coach of the 1980s.  

 

 

There was Don Coryell....and then endless poseurs.

 

Walsh stole from Al Davis and Sid Gilman.

Edited 9 hours ago by Mr. WEO