By Josh Koehn Staff writer Gilroy
– Sitting in his hotel room after a grueling day of training
camp, Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Jeff Garcia was exhausted.
He had just spent the last 13 hours lifting weights, watching film
and running through countless plays with his new team.
By Josh Koehn
Staff writer
Gilroy – Sitting in his hotel room after a grueling day of training camp, Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Jeff Garcia was exhausted. He had just spent the last 13 hours lifting weights, watching film and running through countless plays with his new team.
But in addition to the toll of training camp, there was the added weight of the passing of his friend and mentor, Bill Walsh.
When asked what Walsh meant to him in a phone conversation Tuesday night, Garcia was clear that he had lost someone that was much more than just a coach.
“Bill Walsh is just a great person first of all,” Garcia said. “He touched a lot of people’s lives, bettered a lot of people’s lives. I was one of those persons that he had a positive effect on. He was a guy that believed in me, my abilities, believed I could play in the NFL. He never gave up on me. He had an opportunity to getting me into a place, allowing me to compete for a place on a team. It is because of him that I got the opportunity to play with the 49ers.”
But Walsh didn’t just try then. He had believed in Garcia from the day Garcia played Walsh’s Stanford Cardinal in 1993. It may have been because Garcia lit up the Cardinal, but it also could have been a little Spartan pride.
“It wasn’t a bad thing he was a fellow San Jose State alum,” Garcia joked.
Regardless, Walsh’s belief in the Gilroy native’s abilities, and the support he gave, is something Garcia believes made much of his success possible.
“So much of that, I have to thank him for,” he said. “For the things he did for me, even when I was coming out of college, he made calls and sent letters (to other teams). It’s unfortunate that no one at that time took him up on it. I’m just so thankful for the relationship that I had with him.”
That relationship took on a familial role as Jeff would look to Walsh for advice on his career, and his life in general.
“He was he type of guy that I would ask (questions) in situations that I would ask my dad about,” Garcia said. “Decisions that I had to make in my life, teams that I was going to in free agency, I would ask Bill. I really valued his opinion and his knowledge.
Being part of the 49ers family for five years, Garcia saw that he wasn’t alone in his admiration.
“He had a father-like role to a lot of players that played beneath him. They just appreciated how he felt and what he thought.”
