In tight games, Bill Walsh stressed relationships, not scheme

If there was a Mount Rushmore for the coaches who most strongly influenced the way football is played and coached, Bill Walsh's face might be on there twice.

The man essentially invented the modern passing game through his West Coast offense, built the team of the 1980s with his 3-time Super Bowl champion San Francisco 49ers, and also happened to write what many consider the Bible of football coaching, a 550-page tome titled Finding the Winning Edge that today can be found for sale online for upwards of $500. 

And as he coached his own teams, Walsh's winning edge wasn't his encyclopedic schematic knowledge. When the chips were down, the wind was blowing and the opposing fans were howling, Walsh didn't dip into his bag of plays. 

Because in those moments, Walsh knew the difference between victory and defeat wasn't in how much ball the players knew or even how they executed his cutting-edge offense. The difference was found in if Walsh's team loved each other more than the other team loved their own teammates. 

"He taught that when you're at Lambeau Field, down by four in the last minute, it's 3rd-and-10, it's sleeting rain and windy and you've never been colder in the life, you want to look across the huddle to someone you have an element of love for," Steve Young said in a Super Bowl episode of This is Football.

Knowing that, Walsh cultivated his teams' culture at every opportunity throughout the week, the year, the road trip -- any time, any where. 

"He used to teach that that love that you need comes from shared common experiences and actually digging in to that other person and standing in their shoes. He worked at it in the locker room, in the training room, in the lunch room, in planes, in hotels," Young said. "I really believe fundamentally around football, which is the ultimate team game, it's the relationships that actually make you great. That element of connection is what's going to make us great."