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The Score Takes Care of Itself…..
Bill Walsh
SF 49ers at Miami Nov 16, 1980
Sensing the imminent kill, fans went into a stadium-wide uproar as we silently turned the ball back to Miami – the game essentially over as the Dolphins extended our losing streak to eight games with their 17-13 victory. The pain of that loss haunts me even now as I think about those final seconds ticking off the clock.
It was a horrible and numbing defeat, overwhelming for me because of its potential impact – a job I had worked for my entire adult live was in jeopardy – but also because of the stupid, self-inflicted, almost suicidal way in which we lost. As the crowd roared its approval and Miami players and fans swarmed over the filed, I stood alone on the sideline in a cocoon of grief, emotionally gutted, wonder if I had the strength to even get back to our locker room.Unless you have experienced this type of emotional shock and the bleak interior landscape it creates, it is hard to comprehend the impact. The memory never leaves you and acts as both a positive and negative force, spurring you to work harder and harder while also creating a fear inside that it might happen again. (For me, that fear eventually became more than I could handle.)
Now Shula trotted briskly across the field to shake hands and offer a few perfunctory words of condolence. I have no clue as to what he said, but even though I was in some state of shock, and the instincts took over. I offered my hand; he shook it, shouted something in my ear, and disappeared back in to the public pandemonium and celebration at midfield.The next few hours –until we got out of the stadium complex and arrived at the Miami airport –remain a blur. I cannot remember what, if anything, I said to the players and coaches in the locker room or reporters in the press room. Probably I was on some kind of automatic pilot and experiencing what victims of violence go through when the blot out the memory of assault.
While the moments immediately following the game are missing in my mind, the long trip home is vivid. Coaches are not supposed to cry, but I am not ashamed to admit that on the night flight back to SF I sat in my seat in the front row of the plane and broke down sobbing in the darkness. I felt like a casualty of war being airlifted away from the battlefield.
Bill McPherson, Neal Dahlen, John McVay, Norber Hecker, and some of the other SF assistance coachers and staff understood the grief I was experiencing and shielded me from any players who might come into the area- they huddled around my seat, blocking off view of me, while making small talk and eating peanuts as I slumped down, depressed, in my dark little space, contemplating whether I should offer my resignation. Most debilitating of all-devastating- was a gnawing fear that I did not have white it takes to be an NFL coach. At one point I actually decided to hand in my resignation the next morning; then I changed my mind.
I have tried to describe my anguish, but the works come up short. Everting I had dreamed of professionally for a quarter of a century was in jeopardy just eighteen months after being realized. And yet there was something else going on inside me, a “voice” from down deeper than the emotions, something stirring that I had learned over many years in football and, before that, growing up; namely, I must stand and fight again, stand and fight or it was all over.
And that was the instinct that slowing prevailed as we headed home in the middle of a very dark night. I knew that in a matter of seven days the New York Giants were coming to town with the sole intent of making sure that neither I nor the SF 49ers would stand and fight again.In my mind-or gut- and in spite of the pain, I knew I had to force myself to somehow start looking ahead-to overcome my grief over the debacle in Miami- or it would severely damage our efforts to prepare properly for the battle with NY; my comportment would directly affect the attitudes and performance of everyone who looked to me for answers and direction. I had to do what I was being paid to do; be a leader.
I wish I could tell you that is what happened – that I simply turned a switch and was magically transformed from an emotional basket caste into an invincible field general. It was not that way. It took time for me to stop despairing and regain some composure, to settle down and start thinking straight, but gradually, during those hours on the flight back to California, I began to pull myself together.
In the NFL events occur-hit you- at supersonic speeds with volcanic force during the regular season. There are not months or weeks to recover, not even days. Usually only hours or minutes. While you are throwing a wolf out the back door another is banging on your front door and two more are trying to crawl through your windows. I could hear the NY Giants at our front door.I can say with pride that by the time we landed in SF at 3:15 AM after a six hour flight, I had pulled myself out of the hopelessness and begun working on the strategy we would employ against the Giants when they arrived in a week. I was wobbly but back up on my feet again. I even ate a couple of bag of peanuts and drank some orange juice.
Those awful feelings brought on by the events in Miami were in retreat because I was able to summon strength enough to pull my focus, my thinking out of the past and move it forward to our next big problem. It does take strength to shift your attention off the pain when you feel as though your soul has been stripped bare.
At times like that I would think back to my days as an amateur boxer, when I would see a guy knocked flat on his back and then awkwardly struggle to one shaky knee. Everything is blurry, his balance is gone, consciousness is tenuous, he is bleeding and bruised, but as bad as things are there is one message he hears ringing inside his head; “Stand up, boy, stand up and fight” I know because as a young man I was that boxer.NFL football is no different from any professional endeavor, boxing or business or anything where the stakes are significant and the competition extreme: When you are knocked down, you must get yup; you must stand and fight.
When the inevitable setback, loss, failure, or defeat comes crashing down on you all yourself grieving time, but then recognize that the road to recovery and victory lies in having the strength to get up off the mate and plan your next move.Failure is part of success On Sunday we defeated the Giants 12-0. A week later we beat New England 21-17 then beat New Orleans 38-35 after being down 35-7.
Sixteen months after I had the emotional breakdown on the trans-continental flight from Miami we won the Super Bowl.
