Price: Walsh paved way for Belichick

For all the talk of Bill Belichick coming of age as a coach under Bill Parcells, Belichick’s success as a coach with the Patriots owes more to Bill Walsh than to Parcells.

Walsh, who died yesterday of leukemia at the age of 75, was remembered by Belichick in a statement released by the Patriots late yesterday afternoon. It read, in part, “Beyond being a great offensive coach, Bill mastered running an entire pro football organization. He figured out everything from the big picture down to the smallest detail and documented it in his book, ‘Finding The Winning Edge,’ which was groundbreaking.”

In the history of pro football, Parcells and Belichick remain inextricably linked by several years and a pair of Super Bowl titles with the Giants. Parcells remains fire and brimstone — as a modern-day Lombardi, no one was/is better at “coaching up” a team to victory. And while Belichick does have that gene — just ask any player who’s been on the receiving end of a Belichick rant — he’s not as inclined to frequently give himself over to emotion like Parcells. Like Walsh was throughout his coaching career, Belichick is more inclined to analytically break down an opponent, searching for weaknesses like a general preparing to face an opposing army. It’s that sort of style that causes many to say Belichick owes more of his approach to Walsh than to Parcells, and have caused people like the late David Halberstam to refer to Belichick as the “lineal descendent” of Walsh.

Belichick is not part of the Walsh coaching tree, but he’s in the same forest. In truth, Walsh was a forerunner to the modern thinking man’s game that Patriots’ fans have enjoyed in Foxborough eight to 10 times a year since 2000. While Walsh was perhaps the yin to Belichick’s yang — the former 49ers coach was the innovator of the West Coast offense, while Belichick remains the defensive gold standard by which all other coaches are measured — their legacies are still closer than Belichick and Parcells will ever be.

Twenty years before Belichick did many of the same things with the Patriots, Walsh succeeded in San Francisco by using a series of non-traditional team-building approaches that were ahead of their time. Like Belichick, Walsh leaned heavily on Sun-Tzu’s “The Art of War,” using the Chinese philosopher as the centerpiece of his overall approach to the game. And like Belichick, Walsh overcame struggles early in his coaching career (he went 2-14 his first season in San Francisco) to replace a culture of losing with an unprecedented streak of success.

Both ultimately succeeded by trumpeting the mental aspects of the game, using statistical analysis and innovative thinking to win where others had failed. (Belichick has used case studies from Cal-Berkley statistical professors when it came to deciding what to do on fourth down.) Both knew creating a strong locker room infrastructure was key — that way, they could support a player and help him thrive, no matter the players’ background. (Walsh was able to create a climate that would later support the arrival of questionable character guys like Deion Sanders and Rickey Watters. The Patriots have done the same thing in recent years with Corey Dillon and Randy Moss.)

In truth, the success of Walsh and Belichick is a tribute to brains over brawn, the ultimate triumph of smart football, and the best example that football is indeed a thinking man’s game that features equal parts Stanley Morgan and Sun-Tzu.

Christopher Price is sports editor of Boston Metro. He can be reached at cprice@metro-boston.com.