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View Full Version : Really excellent football chalk/history book



Akagi
08-15-2010, 11:04 AM
I highly, highly recommend Sports Illustrated Blood, Sweat & Chalk: The Ultimate Football Playbook: How the Great Coaches Built Today's Game (http://www.amazon.com/Sports-Illustrated-Blood-Sweat-Chalk/dp/1603200614/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top). Not as a primer for understanding the game, but as a history of how different strategies and formations evolved and spread throughout the history of the game, starting with the single wing 100 years ago and finishing with the A-11 in the last few years.

Quoted with permission (Amazon allows limited quoting from ebooks on social network sites), two passages related to the Steelers; the first is from the chapter on the Cover Two, writing about its evolution:

"The great leap forward was initiated in the early 1970s by Bud Carson, a slight man among the giants of the NFL.... Capitalizing on the power of the 6'3", 205-pound Blount (he was really as much a linebacker as he was a defensive back), Carson pushed the corners up to the line of scrimmage and instructed them to jam the wide receivers. The safeties--Mike Wagner and Glen Edwards (or, when Edwards was hurt, Ralph Anderson)-- were assigned to cover deep behind the jamming corners... 'Bud came in one day, I think it was early in the season,' as Wagner recalls, 'and just drew it on a chalkboard. It was different, but I think everyone in the room could see the potential right away. We went out to practice that same day and started running it. And we loved it.'"

This is in a long chapter on the Cover Two, detailing how it was used in some form by Bill Yeoman at Houston in the '60s, and in high schools in the '60s and '70s; a major theme in the book is the borrowing between coaches at all levels, high school, college, and pro. But he gives Carson the credit for "the great leap forward". He calls Jack Lambert "freakishly skilled and ferocious... the perfect Cover Two linebacker." Lots of Steeler stuff in this chapter, and of course it traces Tony Dungy's lineage to the black & gold.


And the chapter on the Zone Blitz starts:

"In one of the most important plays of the most important game of the NFL's 89th season, a 242-pound, shot put-shaped linebacker intercepted a pass on the final snap of the first half and returned it 100 yards for a touchdown. The play was a bizarre sight, as the Steelers' James Harrison staggered the final 10 yards into the end zone where he collapsed and lay exhausted from the effort of lugging his dense, powerful body the entire length of the field, a body clearly not designed for such work. But it was the beginning, not the end, of this long, operatic play that fit more significantly into football history."

The author goes on for several pages detailing how the play evolved, and how Harrison baited Warner, and how the defensive play call fit into the Steelers scheme for the game and the season. He then goes on to put the play into perspective:

"LeBeau, more than anyone, could appreciate Harrison's zone dog. The seeds of that play had been planted more than a quarter century earlier, when LeBeau embarked on a professional odyssey that would lead to a reinvention of defensive football."

As is the theme of the book, he gives LeBeau credit for refining and perfecting ideas, not inventing them; the invention of ideas is always given to coach group think and evolution. He gives props to Hank Bullough for using Mike Hawkins in zone blitz experiments in the '70s, and LeBeau himself gives a lot of credit for his ideas to Bill Arnsparger, for his work with LSU in the '60s and the Dolphins in the '70s, using Bob Matheson as a defensive end who would sometimes drop into coverage, and zone-blitzing Nick Buoniconti and Doug Swift. ""With Bob there, with linebacking skills," says Arnsparger, "we were able to rush five guys and cover with six. That's what you need to run a zone blitz." And the point is continually made that different schemes still work, even though they aren't used often; the Wildcat is a single wing variant. Schemes exist to take advantage of personnel. They are there to give your guys the best opportunity to succeed. If you have guys who work best running a West Coast offense, then that's what you run.

If you want hard Xes and Os, this isn't your book. The hard strategy is not here. This is a human history book, about the people who have driven the way the game looks and feels, the men who have made it what we love. If you are fascinated by football history, the men who think about it and live to make it work it and play it, this is one great book.

GitNoLuv
08-15-2010, 02:33 PM
I should totally get this book. Sounds like it'd be an awesome read!

tony hipchest
08-15-2010, 02:50 PM
peter king and rick gosselin have also given it great reviews. i plan on getting it next.

also suggested and in the same mold (but with more modern day x's, o's and gameday strategies) is "Take your eye off the ball" by pat kirwan.


You’ll never watch the NFL the same way again. Take Your Eye Off the Ball is not a beginner's introduction to football, nor is it a technical manual for only the most studious of fans. Instead, it clearly and simply explains the intricacies and nuances that affect the outcomes of every NFL game on any given Sunday. Get your personally autographed copy exclusively on this site.

http://www.patkirwan.com/

Akagi
08-15-2010, 03:38 PM
peter king and rick gosselin have also given it great reviews. i plan on getting it next.

also suggested and in the same mold (but with more modern day x's, o's and gameday strategies) is "Take your eye off the ball" by pat kirwan.

http://www.patkirwan.com/

I got one of those Kindles a couple weeks ago; I was reading King's column on Monday, and I looked the book up using the Kindle app on my Droid. I bought the damn thing with one click and started reading it on the phone before I was done with MMQ! When I got home, I picked it up on the Kindle. I'm now going to do the same thing with the Kirwan book.

tony hipchest
08-15-2010, 11:29 PM
good deal. we'll have to compare notes. :thumbsup:

this thread is worth a snippet of gooses' review (the same article where he calls the steelers the best nfl franchise)-


Book review

Blood, Sweat and Chalk, Tim Layden
Want to look smart on Sunday afternoons this fall? Or Saturday afternoons or Friday evenings, for that matter? Then read Layden's book, which traces the origins of seemingly all football strategy.
Layden explores all the major offensive and defensive trends and their outgrowth – from Pop Warner's Single Wing to Davey Nelson's Wing T to Vince Lombardi's power sweep to Emory Bellard's Wishbone to Air Coryell to Bill Walsh's West Coast offense. And that's just on offense. He also explains the roots and philosophy of Bud Carson's Cover Two, Buddy Ryan's 46, Dick LeBeau's Zone Blitz and Gary Patterson's 4-2-5 scheme among other elements on defense.
Layden interviewed 145 coaches and players and explained the how, what and why of each football strategem in short essay form.


http://www.dallasnews.com/s/dws/nwsltr/sports/fromthe50/stories/081110dnspoinsidenfl.3ee09c2f.html