The Genius of Desperation

September 1, 2018
It's often said the NFL is a copycat league. If a play works for one team, another tries it. But someone came up with that play in the first place, and this fascinating account tracks key innovations back to their sources. Farrar, the lead scout for the Bleacher Report, finds a similarity among the innovators: they were all desperate for something new. We learn, for example, that the modern passing game owes its existence to Sid Gilman, a coach in the upstart American Football League, which was struggling to survive. Gilman developed timing pass patterns in which a quarterback would throw to a spot with the expectation the receiver and the ball would arrive simultaneously. That's the cornerstone of the modern NFL offense today. Defense changed forever with the arrival of New York Giant rookie linebacker Sam Huff in the late fifties. His talents were so special that the Giants needed a new scheme to showcase them; thus, the invention of the 4-3 defense, predicated on the physical and mental skills of the middle linebacker. An entertaining deep dive into the evolution of the modern game.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)