“The Best Game Ever: Giants V. Colts, 1958″ Book Review

The Best Game Ever: Giants vs. Colts, 1958, and the Birth of the Modern NFL  by Mark Bowden

Review by C. Douglas Baker

The Best Game Ever is a fairly good account of what is probably the most famous game in NFL history—the 1958 NFL Championship game where the Baltimore Colts defeated the New York Giants 23-17 in the NFL’s first sudden death overtime game.

The game pitted some of the greatest players of all time against one another, such as Johnny Unitas and Raymond Berry of the Colts and Frank Gifford and Sam Huff of the Giants.

It also sported three legendary coaches: Vince Lombardi on offense for the Giants, Tom Landry on defense for the Giants, and Weeb Ewbank, the head coach of Baltimore who went on to win another seminal NFL Championship when his New York Jets upset his former team, the Baltimore Colts, in Super Bowl III.

As most who follow football closely know, this game is considered the launching point of the modern NFL because it occurred in the early years of television and at least the last part of the game was seen by an estimated 30 million people. After this game, the popularity of professional football took off, particularly because the action is well suited for television viewing.

This book tells the story of the game mostly from the players’ perspective, focusing somewhat more on the Baltimore Colts, particularly Johnny Unitas and Raymond Berry, who both had phenomenal performances in this game. But it also tells the story of other key players on both sides of the ball to greater or lesser degrees.

It does a less stellar job of building the drama of the game, maybe because we already know the outcome. But overall, it completely documents the game and the key turning points that lead to the eventual outcome.

These include Frank Gifford not making a first down on third and short that would have allowed the Giants to run out the clock to win the game, and the Unitas-to-Barry connection on an improvised play for a first down on the final drive in regulation to tie the game.

For a football fan, this is certainly an enjoyable book that provides some insight into the game and the players, particularly Raymond Berry, who gets the most coverage. While I wouldn’t classify this as The Best Football Book Ever, it is well done and worth reading.

The Best Game Ever: Giants vs. Colts, 1958, and the Birth of the Modern NFL

Tony Dungy: Quiet Strength

Quiet Strength: The Principles, Practices, and Priorities of a Winning Life by Tony Dungy with Nathan Whitaker

Review by C. Douglas Baker

Tony Dungy is a rather unique and inspiring person. Tony Dungy has been in the National Football League as a coach for many years. As a head coach, he lead the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to the brink of a championship before being let go. He finally got over the hump by winning Super Bowl XLI over the Chicago Bears behind Peyton Manning and the feisty play of strong safety Bob Sanders.

This memoir is about how Coach Dungy applies his Christian faith to not only his coaching in professional football, but to his life off the field as well. His approach to coaching football is certainly unique. He is no Bill Parcells, who often demeans his players, sometimes in public, to motivate them. He is also not the stereotypical coach who screams, yells, and cusses at his players when they make mistakes or in an attempt to fire them up or get the best out them. His style, by all accounts, is a quiet, understated approach that has certainly worked well for him.

Dungy rebuilt the Tampa Bay Buccaneers from a lousy team to a championship-caliber team, but could never quite get the wins in the playoffs to reach the Super Bowl. He was, most would say, unfairly fired by the Buccaneers as they seemed to feel he was not going to get them past the playoffs and to the Super Bowl. One year after he was let go by Tampa Bay, the team won Super Bowl XXXVII over the Oakland Raiders with Jon Gruden as head coach.

After being hired as head coach by the Indianapolis Colts, Dungy quietly built up the defensive side of the ball. The defensive unit had often let the team down and was clearly a weak link. While the Colts defense never became quite as good as his Buccaneers teams, it was just good enough to get a Super Bowl win.

Beyond talking about applying his faith to his role as head coach, Dungy talks about the importance of his family and his community and how he has striven to give all he can to each. And through this memoir, the reader learns a lot about Dungy’s career in the NFL and his teams, so there is plenty of football talk in the book to please fans of the game. He also talks about how his faith helped him cope with the inexplicable suicide of his teenage son.

Overall, this is an excellent book if you are a fan of football or you just want to hear the story of a devoutly religious man and how he applies his faith to everyday life.

Quiet Strength: The Principles, Practices, and Priorities of a Winning Life

Must Have Resource For Washington Redskins Fans

The Redskins Encyclopedia by Michael Richman

Review by C. Douglas Baker

The Redskins Encyclopedia is definitely a must have for Redskins fans. I am not even a Redskins fan and I found it thoroughly engaging and interesting, which is quite a feat for a text heavy encyclopedic history of a professional football team I don’t even root for.

The bulk of the book is dedicated to a chronological history of the Washington Redskins’ franchise from its origin in 1932 as the Boston Braves through 2006.

The book provides a review of each and every season in Redskins history, and what a history it has been.  You have the 1940’s with Slinging Sammy Baugh and a few World Championships.  You get to relive the topsy-turvy 1970’s under coach George Allen when the team lost Super Bowl VII to the undefeated Miami Dolphins.  You can recapture the glory years under Joe Gibbs and the heyday of the team in the 1980’s, winning three Super Bowls.  And then you can lament, if you are a Redskins fan, the post-Gibbs era and the recent return of Gibbs to save a franchise mired in mediocrity that persists today (and will like to continue to do so under the meddlesome owner Dan Snyder).

During the journey you will meet the great players and characters throughout Redskins history and get an excellent feel for the deep history and historical ebbs and flows of this long tenured franchise.

One of the nice touches of this work is that it breaks Redskins history into eras.  Before each era the book provides introductory insights into the franchise and where it was at and where it was headed before delving into season by season reviews.  This provides context and continuity. 

It also uses text boxes to provide greater detail about seminal Redskins owners, executives, and players. The text boxes provide some excellent information while nicely breaking up the text, making it more reader friendly.

One section of the book consists of mini-biographies of all the great Washington Redskins players, coaches, owners, and executives in the history of the franchise. I thought I would skim through this section quickly but it captured my attention so much I read through the entire section.

The last part of the book provides what most encyclopedias are supposed to provide, all-time team results, records, and other various statistics about the team.

Overall I found this to be a very through and engaging treatment of the history of the Washington Redskins.

 The Redskins Encyclopedia

Excellent Modern Day History Of The New England Patriots

 

The Blueprint: How the New England Patriots Beat the System to Create the Last Great NFL Superpower
by Christopher Price

 

Review by C. Douglas Baker

 

This book lays out the reason the New England Patriots have been able to sustain a high level of excellence over the past seven years in an era of salary cap limitations that aggressively promotes parity.

Despite this, the Patriots have appeared in four of the last seven Super Bowls, winning three of them. 

Last year they posted an 18-0 record before being defeated in Super Bowl XLII 17-14 by the New York Giants in a rather poorly played game on the Patriot’s part.

How do they do it?

First, Robert Kraft is no longer the meddling owner he was when Bill Parcels was the head coach. He lets the football people make the football decisions, especially on personnel.

Second, Bill Belichick is clearly one of the smartest coaches when it comes to strategy (Super Bowl XLII being an exception).

But he too has learned from his mistakes as head coach of the Cleveland Browns. He treats his players a little differently and has more control over personnel, even though his media skills still lack something to be desired.

Third, Belichick doesn’t try to do everything. It’s impossible. While he has final say over all football related matters, he relies heavily on Scott Piloli, head of player personnel.

Piloli has been with Belichick for a long time and their scouting department turns up high character players who fit Belichick’s system. Their drafts under Belichick have been very good, for the most part, which is critical for building a team.

Fourth, Belichick mostly lets the players police themselves.

The veterans on the team know what it takes to win championships and the team first philosophy that permeates the organization is not just lip service. The veteran players work to make sure everyone stays on this course.

Fifth, the Patriots adroitly manage the salary cap. Unlike a lot of teams they don’t sell out by signing players to huge contracts and guaranteed money to make a one time championship run.

Doing this can hamstring a team for years as players with large signing bonuses counting against the salary cap for years, even if they are no longer productive or even on the team.

Furthermore, there is no sentimentality to their decisions.

They cut Lawyer Malloy, a mainstay at strong safety for several years and a favorite of fans, players, and coaches alike, because of a contract dispute where they felt the amount of money he wanted was not in the long-term interests of team.

And finally they have Tom Brady.

Successful teams must have a decent quarterback at the helm. Brady, a sixth round draft pick, has turned out to be one of the best quarterbacks of his generation. Having mostly a solid defense and Brady at the helm of the offense has been critical to the team’s success.

Overall this book is reasonably well written and is an excellent modern day history of the New England Patriots franchise.

The first part of the book deals with pre-Kraft Patriots history. It was necessary to set up the rest of the book, but there is nothing particularly new here.

The rest of the book does a good job of laying out just why the Patriots have been successful over the past seven years.

That said this book needed a better copy editor. There are many places where conjunctions are missing, which is annoying to the reader.

In one chapter a quote by Belichick is repeated within a few paragraphs of each other. At times the author tells us something and then basically repeats the same information in different words, which is what happened with the redundant quote.

Nevertheless, this is a book that Patriots fans and football fans in general, should greatly enjoy.

The Blueprint: How the New England Patriots Beat the System to Create the Last Great NFL Superpower

Tiki Barber on Tiki Barber (and the New York Giants)

Tiki: My Life in the Game and Beyond by Tiki Barber with Gil Reavill

Review by C. Douglas Baker

I’ve always had a lot of admiration for Tiki Barber. Most of those reading this review probably already know who Tiki Barber is, but he played for the New York Giants as a tailback from 1997 to 2006, ending his career with over 10,000 yards rushing and 5,000 yards receiving.

Only two other running backs have accomplished that feat (Marshall Faulk and Marcus Allen). He retired at the end of the 2006 season, at the age of 31 at the top of his game.

I’m not a New York Giants fan, but as football fan you have to appreciate the way he played on the field. He wasn’t the biggest back, but he was an electric one and the last five years of his career he was one of the top backs in the league. He is also clearly a very bright and articulate fellow, retiring to go into a broadcasting career that isn’t just some ex-jock talking sports.

In this book Tiki takes the opportunity to talk about his life experiences. He grew up in a single parent household in Roanoke, Virginia with his twin brother Ronde Barber, who is an outstanding cornerback for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Growing up with a hard working mother raising two sons, and having an alter ego in an identical twin, clearly shaped his outlook on life and kept him grounded. He also talks very briefly about his career at the University of Virginia, a school he and his brother chose more for its location and academics than they did (obviously) for its football prowess.

The bulk of the book, however, is about Tiki’s career with the New York Giants. There really isn’t a lot of nitty-gritty X’s and O’s discussion in the book, or interesting anecdotes about crazy player antics, strategies, or the inside story of the New York Giants.

This book is more about his perseverance going from what many considered to be an undersized back on special teams and third downs, to an every down back and one of the best to ever play the game.

The last part of the book focuses more on the last few years of his career with really a new regime, a new disciplinarian head coach in Tom Coughlin, a new quarterback in Eli Manning, along with new offensive players, Plaxico Burress (WR) and Jeremy Shockey (TE).

Anyone who has closely followed football knows of what appears to be a little bit of turmoil and dissention on the Giants team. A team with prominent players complaining about the head coach and his disciplinarian ways.  Of course, there is the media, or at least some in the media, were somewhat harsh on Tiki announcing his retirement during his last season, saying it was selfish and a distraction for the team.

Tiki himself was part of the problem, saying after one playoff game, the team was “out coached” and making other allusions to his dislike of the way the team was handled under Coughlin. Tiki rationalizes this a bit in the book.

Certainly players can say what they want, but regardless of what Tiki says, that players aren’t paying attention to this and it’s not a distraction, I don’t find that very believable. Anytime you have prominent players undermining the head coach he loses respect and it will get into the mindset of the team. 

Maybe Tiki is right. He says he retired, at least in part, because Coughlin made him lose his desire to play and he wanted to pursue other things in his life. But all that swirling attention around the coach certainly couldn’t have helped the team mentally.

Overall I found this book interesting, but nothing particularly inspiring or insightful. It is Tiki’s story and that, in and of itself, is interesting enough for me.

For those looking for a tell all, inside story of the Giants or pro football, this is not the book for you. For those looking for X’s and O’s and strategy, this is not the book for you either. For those looking for a snapshot into the thoughts and life of a great NFL player, this is your ticket.

Tiki: My Life in the Game and Beyond