The Education of a Coach

“I came to the San Francisco 49ers with a specific goal—to implement what I call the Standard of Performance. It was a way of doing things, a leadership philosophy, that has as much to do with core values, principles, and ideals as with blocking, tackling, and passing; more to do with the mental than with the physical.”

Bill was a genius at making the complex comprehensible, the comprehensible achievable.

One of the game’s great innovators, Paul Brown was the first (or among the first in some cases) to use IQ tests to evaluate players, establish a game film “library” and studiously analyze the footage, teach players in a formal classroom setting, send in plays from the sideline with “messenger” linemen, fit helmets with face masks, expand the networ

He accomplished this in three ways: (1) he had a tremendous knowledge of all aspects of the game and a visionary approach to offense; (2) he brought in a great staff and coaches who knew how to coach, how to complement his own teaching of what we needed to know to rise to his standard of performance; and (3) he taught us to hate mistakes.

I learned from him then, for the first time, that he had attended every one of my high school JV and varsity games, even when I was the last man on the bench and didn’t get a minutes’s worth of playing time. He told me he had sat up in the back behind our bench where I’d be sure not to see him. I asked him why he did that and he told me he wanted t

Discipline is based on pride in the profession [my italics] of arms, on meticulous attention to details, and on mutual respect and confidence.