Sports Illustrated Blood, Sweat & Chalk The Ultimate Football Playbook: How the Great Coaches Built Today's Game

by Layden, Tim

• ISBN13: 9781603200615
• ISBN10: 1603200614
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-08-03
• Publisher: Sports Illustrated

Summary

The modern game of football is filled with plays and formations with names like the Counter Trey, the Wildcat, the Zone Blitz and the Cover Two. They have become part of the sport's vernacular, and yet for many fans they remain just names, often confusing ones. To rectify that, Tim Layden has drilled deep into the core of the game to reveal not only how these chalkboard X's and O's really work on the field, but also where they came from and who dreamed them up. These playbook schemes, many of them illuminated by diagrams, bear the insignia of some of the game's great innovators, men like Vince Lombardi, Don Coryell, Tom Osborne, Bill Walsh, Tony Dungy and Buddy Ryan. But football has also been radically altered by the ingenious work of men with more obscure names, like Tiger Ellison, Emory Bellard and Mouse Davis. In Blood, Sweat and Chalk, Layden takes readers into the meeting rooms-and in some cases the living rooms-where the game's most significant ideas were hatched. He goes to the coaches and to the players who inspired them, and lets them tell their stories. In candid conversations with some of football's most intriguing characters, Layden provides a fascinating guide to the game, helping fans to better see the subtleties of America's favorite sport. The game of football is cyclical. Coaches today are getting too much credit for formations and offenses that were dreamed up years ago. Tim Layden does a wonderful job of tracing the origin of those ideas in Blood, Sweat and Chalk. - Urban Meyer, Head Football Coach, University of Florida Tim Layden explores the minds and ambitions of the game's formative thinkers. Serious students of football must have this on their bookshelves! - Steve Sabol, President, NFL Films Blood, Sweat and Chalk is a must-read for all football aficionados. I, of course, especially enjoyed reading about the great Don Coryell, a true innovator in the game we all love. His ideas changed football-and this book shows you how. - Dan Fouts, Hall of Fame Quarterback, San Diego Chargers Tim has created a playbook that's instructional, a history book that's fascinating and a football bible that's a must-read for anybody who loves the game. All in one. - Dan Patrick, Host, NBC's Football Night in America Tim Layden does a great job telling the story of the people and the ideas that had a major impact on the game of football as we know it. - Mack Brown, Head Football Coach, University of Texas This is one of the most important sports books of our generation-and a lot of fun too. The formations and philosophies that win Super Bowls and national titles are made crystal clear. If you live for fall weekends, this is your book. - Peter King, Author, Monday Morning Quarterback.

Author Biography

Sports Illustrated senior writer Tim Layden, who joined the magazine in March 1994, primarily reports upon college football and Olympic sports, but has written about a variety of subjects for the publication.

Table of Contents

The Web of Coaches
Prologue	p. 9
The Single Wing	p. 14
It's more than 100 years old, the offense of Pop Warner, but it's still out on the field today---you can ask Bill Belichick
The Wingt	p. 26
The offense of the '50s was curated by a legend named Tubby and elevated by a team of Fightin' Blue Hens
The Wildcat	p. 34
The recent resurgence of an old idea has intriguing portent---the end of the quarterback as we know him
The Wishbone	p. 44
A good ol' Texas coach had a crazy idea, his boss said O.K., and the damn thing tore through football like a tornado
Option Fever	p. 58
How the wishbone's connected to the flexbone, and the flexbone's connected to the I-bone.à
Air Coryell	p. 70
In the '60s, a squeaky-voiced coach decided there was only one way to beat a better team: Throw like hell
Air Heirs	p. 84
The disciples of Don picked up where the great Coryell left off---and won more than their share of Super Bowls
The West Coast Offense	p. 90
It really should be named the Cincinnati Offense, but make no mistake: This is Bill Walsh's baby
Lombardi's Power Sweep	p. 104
Here was one man's proof that a key to football will always be knocking the crap out of somebody else at the line of scrimmage
Student Body Right	p. 116
The play made guys like Ricky Bell and Marcus Allen legends at Southern Cal. Oddly enough, even Bobby Bowden was involved
Zone Blocking	p. 124
It's all the rage in the modern running game, but don't try to tell an old hard-core offensive line coach it's a revolution
The Spread Offense	p. 134
How Mouse met Tiger, horrified the football establishment and---40 years later---made Vince Young famous
The One-Back Spread	p. 148
An L.A. high school coach took a chance and launched an offense---and John Elway and Drew Brees with it
Byu Air Raid	p. 156
An all-out, pass-happy system was born and raised in Utah but then went flying into unexpected places
The Spread Option	p. 162
The game changed on a bobbled ball by an obscure quarterback at a school you've never heard of
The Cover Two	p. 170
As the long passing game began to run amok in the NFL, frantic defensive coaches needed help; this was it
The Ryan Family Defense	p. 182
How Buddy Ryan invented the 46, dominated a Super Bowl with it, then passed his wisdom to his sons Rex and Rob
The Zone Blitz	p. 198
In 1983 Dick LeBeau and the Cincinnati Bengals hit on a defensive ploy that really worked. It still does
Spread Stoppers	p. 210
Joe Lee Dunn uses a 3-3-5 defense, Gary Patterson uses a 4-2-5, both for the same reason: dread of the spread
The Double a Gap Blitz	p. 222
All the late nights in Jim Johnson's office paid off in what may be the ultimate defensive weapon---so far
The No-Huddle Offense	p. 230
Wicky Wacky Wyche took the two-minute offense and told Boomer to use it every minute
A-II and Beyond	p. 242
When two California high school coaches found a loophole in the rule book, they may have seen the future
Acknowledgments	p. 251
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