Re: R.I.P. Bill Walsh
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Interesting how he got the WC offense started in Cincy originally with a QB named Virgil Carter who couldn't really throw deep - and that he favored his ex_QB at Stanford over Montana in 1979.
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Steve DeBerg was the starting QB in 1979, and he played at San Jose State, not Stanford. DeBerg had a very good grasp of Walsh's offense, but had a below average arm and tended to throw the big interception late in games. Kind of a weird situation occured in the third week of the 1980 season, when DeBerg developed laryngitis and wasn't able to properly make the snap count at the line. The Niners got permission from the league to mount a loudspeaker to the back of DeBerg's shoulderpads. At one point during the game the Niner's had the ball deep in Jets territory and DeBerg came running off the field with his helmet in his hands gesturing that the speaker system wasn't working. In came the much more mobile Montana who promptly ran a naked bootleg 20 yards for the score. After the game Walsh admitted that the speaker failure was faked and that exact scenario had been planned for in advance, kind of Walsh's way of letting Montana experience success without putting any pressure on him.
Montana took over the starting job for good midway through the 1980 season and DeBerg was traded to the Broncos that offseason (where he became the guy that John Elway replaced.) Guy Benjamin, who did QB for Walsh at Stanford, was Montana's backup during the Superbowl season in 1981.
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Cool story about Deberg and the microphone. The QB I was referring to though was literally Walsh's QB when he was at Stanford - something like "Dils". I don't even know if he ever made an NFL team as a starter.
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