Maybe the best draft read I have ever seen

kearly

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Saw this linked from Matt Waldman's blog, it's called "Bill Walsh: draft insider."

The site lists every position and then provides real writeups from Walsh explaining his philosophy on those positions. I think Pete Carroll is the Bill Walsh of the 21st century, and they even worked together briefly (Carroll was 49ers DC, Walsh a 49ers consultant). Pete considers himself a protege of Walsh, and Walsh apparently reciprocated that admiration. Both Walsh and Carroll are incredibly brilliant, and we are lucky to have our head coach.

Walsh was an intellectual above all else, and his ultimate goal was about making football a thinking man's game. His stuff is always a great listen/read. Read how he starts off his analysis on QBs, and try not to think about Russell Wilson:

To become a great quarterback, there must be instincts and intuition. This is the area that can be the difference between a very solid quarterback and a great quarterback. This isn't an area you can do much with as a coach. You can certainly bring a quarterback up to a competitive standard, but to reach greatness the quarterback must possess that inherently, ala Billy Kilmer, Sonny Jurgensen, Ken Stabler and Warren Moon...

This is where the great quarterback uses his experience, vision, mobility and what we will call spontaneous genius. He makes something good happen. This, of course, is what we saw in Joe Montana when he pulled out those dramatic victories for Notre Dame.

There is a lot more, too.
 

chrispy

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... inner confidence, to the point of cockiness, ...


guess which position Bill Walsh suggests this trait is necessary
 

SeaHawk80

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Great Read Kearly, as usual

I thought it was fun to read through his talent eval on the players especially how many players he nailed dead on, see OT,RB,CB It was as if he was drafting for us.
 

onanygivensunday

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That was a fantastic read!! I read every position and could not stop until I had read them all. :th2thumbs:

What stood out to me, other than the absolute rich depth of thought that Bill put into these write-ups, was Walsh's ideal sizes for each position.

As you would expect, almost every position was about 10-15 lbs lighter and an inch or two shorter than the size of players in the NFL right now... EXCEPT, Bill"s ideal size for a cornerback in 1997 was 6' 2" and 195 lbs, which I believe was way over-sized for that era... and now think of Richard Sherman and Brandon Browner. It's no surprise who influenced Pete here.

I would love to have a read of Pete and John's ideal characteristics for each position. Then MAYBE we'd stand a chance at predicting who they take in the draft.

One more thought... it became obvious to me during the read that Bill studied the greats of all-time, figured out what characteristics they possessed and adopted those characteristics into his definition of the ideal player at each position.
 

two dog

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Man, what a good read. Had to add that to my "football" file. Thank you.
If you like this sort reading, may I respectfully recommend a couple of books.

"The Draft" by Pete Williams. One of the few books which talks a lot about the Seahawks,
even if it is about Timmy, David Greene and other things you might rather forget.
Still a good read, mainly because of the info about pre combine training academies
and the huge role agents play in the draft. Long out of print but worth finding.

Even longer out of print (1973) is "Lombardi on Football". Vince shows us that
basic terminology and fundamentals do not change. At least they haven't yet.

Sorry, my intent was not to divert but to augment. Thank you for finding this
information which is exactly what every draft fan is looking for.
 

-The Glove-

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Good read. Must be from the mid-90's. That was a great call he made on Tony Gonzalez. He was spot on.
 

chris98251

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Great find Kearly, doesn't matter the era really, put aside some of the size aspects, it's the intangibles about the positions that are the real keys. I see a lot of those attributes in the guys we bring in as F.A's and our picks reading that.
 

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