Good morning and welcome to the increase in re-impact podcasts. I'm Justin Sua episode

1,897. This episode is for those of you who have a weakness, a weakness of any kind.

And you may be viewing your weakness as an obstacle to progressing. I want to share with

you a story from Bill Walsh, the legendary NFL football coach from many, many years past.

But he ended up being extremely successful because he had to navigate a weakness on his

team. Now, the story comes from Billy Oppenheimer, a newsletter that I get from him. And he

says this, quote, in 1968, Bill Walsh became the offensive coordinator of the Cincinnati

Bengals. The Bengals were an expansion team, and they got the players other NFL teams

didn't want. And because he had a roster full of comically inadequate players, according

to Walsh, Walsh, he had to create a revolutionary NFL offense. In the late 1960s, NFL offenses

were primarily a run the football type team. To stop the run, defenses were big, the players

were strong, they were physical, they were mean. So it was clear to Walsh, the new found

Cincinnati Bengals would have to rely on passing the ball because they didn't have the

personnel to compete with the, the, the size of the bodies they would go against. So here

was another problem. He needed to pass the ball, but Walsh's quarterback, Virgil Carter

had a terrible arm. Virgil, as Carter was once told, if you want to throw the football

more than 20 yards, you better fill it with helium. So Bill Walsh had to solve this problem.

He embraced Virgil's anatomical weakness by developing something called known as what

is now called the West Coast offense. It's an offensive playbook full of passes thrown

to wide receivers who ran precise routes to exact spots within 12 yards of Virgil Carter.

No helium was required, Walsh choked. Then if the West Coast offense was immediately

effective in 1970, the Bengals won the AFC Central Division. And after a few years of

...