The Games That Changed the Game

August 23, 2010
Jaworski, a former NFL star quarterback and analyst of Monday Night Football, with an able assist from Cosell and Plaut, of NFL Films, suggest the future of pro football was transformed by seven crucial games over 40 years. With diagramed plays and strategies, Jaworski expertly analyzes the selected gridiron contests, showing how the sport morphed through the imagination and daring of unorthodox coaching by Sid Gillman, Bud Carson, Don Coryell, Bill Walsh, Buddy Ryan, Dick LeBeau, and Bill Belichick. Jaworski stresses the strengths and weaknesses of each coach and the team he led to glory through masterful moves and countermoves in a game with masterful players and smart defenses. In the end, Jaworski sets aside his TV personality, and offers a thoughtful explication in these pages.

Starred review from August 1, 2010

Former MVP quarterback "Jaws" Jaworski, voluble, expert analyst on ESPN's NFL Matchup and on Monday Night Football, is noted for his on-air scrutiny of game tape. With NFL Films senior producers Cosell and Plaut, Jaws here selects seven NFL games that best exemplify a particular change in the evolution of coaching strategy, breaking down the coach's tape of the game to examine the tactical approach involved. We get Steelers' assistant Bud Carson's Cover 2 Defense, Chargers' coach Don Coryell's Roving Y Attack, 49ers' coach Bill Walsh's West Coast Offense, and Patriots' coach Bill Belichick's Bull's-Eye Game Plan Approach, among others. Through interviews with those involved, Jaworski illuminates the impact of each of these stratagems, explaining the implications of everything from roster size to hash mark placement. The tenor remains amiable and clear. If you want to understand the strategic and cerebral part of this very physical sport, this most fascinating football book of the season is for you.

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from September 1, 2010
Jaworski, a self-described football wonk, former NFL quarterback with the Philadelphia Eagles, and Monday Night Football analyst, picks seven games he feels are benchmarks in the ever-evolving tactical strategy that defines the way pro football is played. In a wonderfully accessible formateven for less wonky fanshe provides the lineage of the coaching philosophy that provides the basis for each selection, describes in glorious detail how it was applied in the landmark game, and then adds a postscript describing how the strategy affected the game in subsequent years. This is crazy good football info. The game accounts are great, but even better are Jaworskis analysis of coaching philosophy. Among those he profiles are Don Coryell, the father of the wide-open, go-deep passing blitzkrieg that still has active coaching descendants, and Bill Walsh, who led the 49ers to multiple Super Bowl wins and developed the West Coast offensestill a staple todayin the 1980s. On the other side of the ball, Jaworski notes that while Buddy Ryans 46 defense, which propelled the Chicago Bears to the 1985 Super Bowl title, is considered the all-time dominant defense, it wouldnt quite work in todays NFL. Filled with anecdotes, player recollections, and other wonderful details, this should be the most popular football book of the season. Terrific reading.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)