Marty Mornhinweg on the passing of Bill Walsh

I walked up about three minutes into the conversation, but I think he ended up repeating most of what he said early. The approximate questions are on parentheses.)

MORNHINWEG, JULY 29

(Was he excited to see Garcia playing well last year?)
He was excited that the Philadelphia Eagles were doing well, he was happy that Jeff was doing well.

(How will he be remembered?)
Not only building the dynasty and winning Super Bowls but the way he did it. Really was an innovator both on the field and off, with the way he did the personnel and the way he practiced. Everybody refers to the West Coast system. It's not only just the offensive plays, it's the way you practice, the way you meet, daily schedules, weekly schedules, monthly schedules, yearly schedules. On and on and on. He really developed that.

(Biggest influences on you as a coach?)
Andy Reid, Mike Holmgren and Bill Walsh were the three guys. I was offensive coordinator in San Francisco and he was general manager and it wouldn't have been real smart without me trying to grab him on a daily basis and try to talk football with him, and so we did that quite a bit.
He was a mentor for many, many coaches around the league and he enjoyed that.

(Best advice he ever gave you?)
He gave me an awful lot of advice throughout the years, and I can't remember any bad advice he gave me, so it was all good advice.

(He was always portrayed as the anti-Lombardi, the coach as teacher...)
I think much of that is true and the perception of him like that is true. However, he was a tough man, and the players that played for him and the coaches that coached for him will tell you that he was a tough man and he was a tough coach. However the perception was that he was a teacher, and he was a very gifted teacher.

(Best memories?)
There's two that click right into my mind. In training camp when he was a general manager and I was a coordinator, we’d grab 15 minutes or a half hour every day and we'd talk football. The other one was when the great Jerry Rice was playing his last game in Candlestick, and he came down with about two minutes left and the game basically was over. And we were going to go into our slowdown for a minute, and he says, ‘Hey, lets get Jerry one more.’ And we did. And the balloons flew, and we gave the game ball to Jerry. So those were the two that popped into my mind right away.

(TO caught 20 balls that day)
**Laughs** That was the day. But we got Jerry one more.

(Who called those plays?)
**Raises his hand** They were good plays, though.
I think people forget, Jerry, that day, I think he caught six for 80 or 90 yards, which was a good day. I was desperately trying to get him the football. I was trying to get him a couple touchdowns. If you remember, he got tackled down on the one or two twice.
But… anyways.