You can call it luck or destiny, but the moment Bill Walsh entered the world of professional football, a path was cleared for him to change the game forever.  It began in 1966 when Bill Walsh went to work for the Oakland Raiders, where he became specialized in vertical passing offense while training with Raider’s head coach, Al Davis.  Two years later when Walsh was named quarterback coordinator for the Cincinnati Bengals, he had to put his specialized training to use.  Walsh had to adapt a system to accommodate the Bengals’ newest player, Virgil Carter, a quarterback Cincinnati had acquired in a 1969 trade with the Chicago Bears.  The problem with Carter was that despite his stellar agility and accuracy in throws, he lacked strength.  Bill Walsh began to develop what later became the West Coast Offense (WCO), a variation of the vertical passing offense in Oakland.  The WCO highlighted Virgil Carter’s strengths by allowing him to make short passes, with a larger range of open wide receivers, with less dependence on defensive blocking, and no deep pass requirement.  He spent eight seasons with the Bengals until he departed in 1977 to become Stanford football’s head coach.  Walsh took one year to implement West Coast Offense into the Stanford team and brought them to two championships in the two seasons that he spent with them.  This was just the beginning of the Reign of Bill Walsh and the West Coast Offense.  Because what followed Cincinnati and Stanford is what made Bill Walsh a household name.
Walsh was appointed head coach of the San Francisco 49ers in 1979.  He had acquired a team that had gone 2 and 14 in the previous year and would go on to repeat the dismal season in 1979, his first year with San Francisco.  Things turned around when he found what the West Coast Offense had been missing to bring it success in the pros.  Walsh drafted Joe Montana in 1979 and immediately started him at the center of the WCO in 1980.  The combination of a quick, effective strategy and a dynamic quarterback, proved to be successful as the 49ers won their first Super Bowl under Bill Walsh just two years after he had been appointed.  It also proved to be a deadly combination as Bill Walsh and the 49ers acquired three more championship rings in 1981, 1984, and 1988.  He continued to build a formidable offensive line in San Francisco by drafting the likes of Ronnie Lott, Charles Haley, Jerry Rice, and Steve Young.  Power moves like the implementation of the West Coast Offense and the smart drafts of underrated, but talented athletes, marked Bill Walsh down as one of the most intelligent and innovative coaches and offensive coordinators in NFL history.  Not only did Walsh develop a foolproof way to win, he revolutionized the way coaches and players interact with each and on the field, in turn changing the game into what it is today.