The Art of Smart Football

The Art of Smart Football
Author: Chris B. Brown
Publisher: Scbb Press
Total Pages: 182
Release: 2015-07-09
Genre: Football
ISBN: 9780692448250

Masterfully blending thought provoking analysis with engrossing storytelling, The Art of Smart Football examines football's most innovative and enduring strategies and ideas, through the lens of the sport's best coaches and players. The Art of Smart Football is an eye-opening, fascinating and accessible contribution to our understanding of America's favorite sport. The Art of Smart Football features analysis of football's top strategists and schemes, including: Pete Carroll's aggressive defense Chip Kelly's spread offense and new-school methods The roots of Bill Belichick's defensive genius Gus Malzahn's up-tempo offense The strategies Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, and Aaron Rodgers use to shred defenses Art Briles and Baylor's wide open attack Nick Saban's defensive evolution The book also includes explorations of the newest trends in football, including "packaged plays" that combine runs and passes into one play, "pattern match" defenses that blend man-to-man and zone pass coverages, how defenses are responding to the spread offense, and much more. Praise for The Art of Smart Football: "The Art of Smart Football made me a smarter football writer . . . Football, as presented by these coaches and by Brown, is such an imaginative game. It's a great read: Go buy it." -- Peter King, The MMQB/Sports Illustrated "A must read if you are a football junkie." -- Trent Dilfer, ESPN/13-year NFL Veteran Quarterback "The best analysis in the game today." -- Rolling Stone "Awesome stuff. I recommend The Art of Smart Football to any coach or fan." -- Matt Bowen, ESPN Columnist/NFL Veteran "When Chris B. Brown releases a book, you should buy it." -- Bill Barnwell, Grantland/ESPN "A deep dive into football. Highly recommended." -- Field Yates, ESPN "The Art of Smart Football is a perfect read for anyone looking to take their knowledge of the game up a notch." -- ElevenWarriors.com

The Essential Smart Football

The Essential Smart Football
Author: Chris Brown
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2012-05-10
Genre: Football
ISBN: 9781470125592

The Essential Smart Football is an examination of football's most important strategies and ideas, through the lens of the game's best coaches, players, and schemes. Brilliantly written and eschewing unnecessary jargon and technicality, it makes a major contribution to our understanding of football to help all of us -- coaches, players, and fans -- appreciate the game we love all the more. The Essential Smart Football features analysis of football's top strategists and their schemes, including: Urban Meyer's spread offense Tom Brady's no-huddle attack Bill Belichick's hybrid defense Gus Malzahn's up-tempo offense Charlie Strong's defensive evolution Mike Leach's pass-happy "Air Raid" The most popular scheme for running the ball in the NFL Nick Saban's school of defense. The book also includes explorations of modern approaches to the West Coast Offense, evolutions in defensive fronts and coverages, the changing role of the running game in spread and pro-style offenses, and much more. "Buy this book if you love football." -- Gregg Rosenthal, Senior Editor, NFL.com "[Chris Brown] has put together a book that you need to buy if you're a football fan with a pulse." -- Bill Barnwell, Staff Writer, Grantland "I'm a better coach after reading this book. A must have in every coach's library!" -- Dub Maddox, Offensive Coordinator, Jenks High School, Jenks, Oklahoma (12x Oklahoma State champions) "Accessibly erudite". -- New York Magazine "If you're a football geek, this is a mandatory purchase." -- Doug Farrar, Yahoo! Sports "Advanced stats are great, but they mean a lot more when you understand where the players are moving on the field and why. Nobody has taught me more about where the players are moving on the field and why than Chris Brown." -- Aaron Schatz, founder of FootballOutsiders.com, columnist for ESPN.com/ESPN the Magazine "Must-have new book for any football fan." -- Dan Shanoff, Quickish.com

Take Your Eye Off the Ball 2.0

Take Your Eye Off the Ball 2.0
Author: Pat Kirwan
Publisher: Triumph Books
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2015-09-15
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1633192946

Renowned NFL analysts' tips to make football more accessible, colorful, and compelling than ever before More and more football fans are watching the NFL each week, but many of them don't know exactly what they should be watching. What does the offense's formation tell you about the play that's about to be run? When a quarterback throws a pass toward the sideline and the wide receiver cuts inside, which player is to blame? Why does a defensive end look like a Hall of Famer one week and a candidate for the practice squad the next? These questions and more are addressed in Take Your Eye Off the Ball 2.0, a book that takes readers deep inside the perpetual chess match between offense and defense. This book provides clear and simple explanations to the intricacies and nuances that affect the outcomes of every NFL game. This updated edition contains recent innovations from the 2015 NFL season.

Offensive Football Strategies

Offensive Football Strategies
Author: American Football Coaches Association
Publisher: Human Kinetics
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2000
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780736001397

A collection of articles previously published in the AFCA's proceedings from its annual meetings and its annual summer manual.

The American Football Trilogy

The American Football Trilogy
Author: Walter Camp
Publisher: Lost Century
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2010
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 0982489129

Includes the original texts: American football / by Walter Camp. Franklin Square, New York : Harper & Brothers, 1891 -- A scientific and practical treatise on American football for schools and colleges / by A. Alonzo Stagg and Henry L. Williams. Hartford, Conn. : Press of the Case, Lockwood & Brainard Company, 1893 -- Football / by Walter Camp and Lorin F. Deland. Cambridge ; Boston ; and New York : Houghton, Mifflin and Company : The Riverside Press, 1896.

Football Scouting Methods

Football Scouting Methods
Author: Steve Belichick
Publisher: Martino Publishing
Total Pages: 196
Release: 2008
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 9781578987061

"Considered the bible of scouting techniques" according to the Los Angeles Times, Football Scouting Methods explains the basic scouting strategies and insights of author Steve Belichick. He was widely viewed as the ablest football scout of his time and coached at the U.S. Naval Academy for 33 years; his son is New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick, a three-time Super Bowl winner. When Steve Belichick died in November 2005, the New York Times headline cited him as "Coach Who Wrote the Book on Scouting," and quoted Houston Texans General Manager Charley Casserly calling Football Scouting Methods "the best book on scouting he had ever read." Joe Bellino, Navy's Heisman Trophy winner in 1960, told the Times that Steve Belichick "was a genius. On Monday nights, he would give us his scouting reports, and even though we were playing powerhouses, I always felt we were prepared because he found a way for us to win." In recent years Football Scouting Methods has been one of the top ten most sought out-of-print books; used copies have been quite scarce. This reissue edition makes the original 1962 text available once again in exact facsimile. The book covers how to scout opponents, recognize defenses, analyze offenses, discover "tip-offs" that reveal the opponent's plays, compose a useful report, self-scout, and conduct postgame analysis. "Steve Belichick taught many younger men how to scout and how to watch film and how to prepare their teams for the next week's game," David Halberstam noted in the Washington Post, and his best student was his own son Bill Belichick, "one of whose greatest skills as a coach to this day remains his ability to analyze other teams, figuring out both their strengths and their vulnerabilities, and shrewdly deciding how to take away from them that which they most want to do." When CBS asked Bill Belichick to name his favorite book, he replied "Well, I've got to go with my dad's. Football Scouting Methods. I'd have to go with that."

The Art of Fielding

The Art of Fielding
Author: Chad Harbach
Publisher: Little, Brown
Total Pages: 395
Release: 2011-09-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0316192163

A disastrous error on the field sends five lives into a tailspin in this widely acclaimed tale about love, life, and baseball, praised by the New York Times as "wonderful...a novel that is every bit as entertaining as it is affecting." Named one of the year's best books by the New York Times, NPR, The New Yorker, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Christian Science Monitor, Bloomberg, Kansas City Star, Richmond Times-Dispatch, and Time Out New York. At Westish College, a small school on the shore of Lake Michigan, baseball star Henry Skrimshander seems destined for big league stardom. But when a routine throw goes disastrously off course, the fates of five people are upended. Henry's fight against self-doubt threatens to ruin his future. College president Guert Affenlight, a longtime bachelor, has fallen unexpectedly and helplessly in love. Owen Dunne, Henry's gay roommate and teammate, becomes caught up in a dangerous affair. Mike Schwartz, the Harpooners' team captain and Henry's best friend, realizes he has guided Henry's career at the expense of his own. And Pella Affenlight, Guert's daughter, returns to Westish after escaping an ill-fated marriage, determined to start a new life. As the season counts down to its climactic final game, these five are forced to confront their deepest hopes, anxieties, and secrets. In the process they forge new bonds, and help one another find their true paths. Written with boundless intelligence and filled with the tenderness of youth, The Art of Fielding is an expansive, warmhearted novel about ambition and its limits, about family and friendship and love, and about commitment -- to oneself and to others. "First novels this complete and consuming come along very, very seldom." --Jonathan Franzen

Sports Illustrated Blood, Sweat and Chalk

Sports Illustrated Blood, Sweat and Chalk
Author: The Editors of Sports Illustrated
Publisher: Time Home Entertainment
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2010-08-03
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1603203761

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 Perfect Pass

The Perfect Pass
Author: S. C. Gwynne
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2016-09-20
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1501116215

An “excellent sports history” (Publishers Weekly) in the tradition of Michael Lewis’s Moneyball, award-winning historian S.C. Gwynne tells the incredible story of how two unknown coaches revolutionized American football at every level, from high school to the NFL. Hal Mumme spent fourteen mostly losing seasons coaching football before inventing a potent passing offense that would soon shock players, delight fans, and terrify opposing coaches. It all began at a tiny, overlooked college called Iowa Wesleyan, where Mumme was head coach and Mike Leach, a lawyer who had never played college football, was hired as his offensive line coach. In the cornfields of Iowa these two mad inventors, drawn together by a shared disregard for conventionalism and a love for Jimmy Buffett, began to engineer the purest, most extreme passing game in the 145-year history of football. Implementing their “Air Raid” offense, their teams—at Iowa Wesleyan and later at Valdosta State and the University of Kentucky—played blazingly fast—faster than any team ever had before, and they routinely beat teams with far more talented athletes. And Mumme and Leach did it all without even a playbook. “A superb treat for all gridiron fans” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review), The Perfect Pass S.C. Gwynne explores Mumme’s leading role in changing football from a run-dominated sport to a pass-dominated one, the game that tens of millions of Americans now watch every fall weekend. Whether you’re a casual or ravenous football fan, this is “a rousing tale of innovation” (Booklist), and “Gwynne’s book ably relates the story of that innovation and the successes of the man who devised it” (New York Journal of Books).

Against Football

Against Football
Author: Steve Almond
Publisher: Melville House Publishing
Total Pages: 194
Release: 2014
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 161219415X

With American Football becoming an increasingly popular sport in the UK, concerns are also being raised about the health impact the sport can have on players. The scary facts about American football causing brain injury have become a hot topic in the media, especially as the same worries are surfacing for other full contact sports such as rugby. Steve Almond was a keen American football fan, but, in light of recent scientific studies about the prevalence of injuries within the sport has slowly turned against the game.