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 plays used by high school, college, and pro football teams have come a long way from the days of the "T" formation. Today, the typical NFL playbook is complex enough to give a calculus textbook a run for its money-and long enough to be given to players on laptop computers. Plays like the end-around, the Hail Mary, and the counter-trey bear the insignia of some of the game's great innovators and the players that inspired them, while the newest schemes and plays used in the pros and college are quickly studied and copied throughout the country. These days, even middle-school teams in Pop Warner leagues are running complex plays, memorized by playing them out in John Madden Football. In Blood, Sweat and Chalk, Tim Layden will take readers back to the origins of the offenses and defenses that have changed the course of football and the men behind them. Readers will be delivered to the meeting rooms (and, in some cases, living rooms) where signifi cant schemes were hatched, including the popular one-back spread offense that was fi rst created by John Elway's high school coach to take advantage of his star quarterback's scrambling ability; the origins of the blitz; and the long reign of the triple option as a staple offense for high school and college. The book will also give readers a behind-the-scenes look at how a modern NFL team formulates its game plan for the upcoming season, and will provide a tutorial for fans to better understand the powerful head games that go hand-in-hand with the big hits.

In the golden years of professional football, one team and one coach reigned supreme: the 1960s Green Bay Packers, and the fiery Vince Lombardi. Run to Daylight! is Lombardi’s own diary of a week at the helm of that magnificent club. Together with legendary sports-journalist, W.C. Heinz, Lombardi takes us from the first review of game films on Monday right through the final gun on Sunday afternoon. We see the planning, the plotting, the practice and the pain as forty-plus men come together to form that precision unit that makes for winning football. Lombardi gives us his views on life, the game, coaching, success, family, and the famed “Lombardi Sweep.” Now, in this anniversary edition, with a special foreword by David Maraniss, we are once again reminded of the passion and power behind America's greatest game. Written in W.C. Heinz’s inimitable style, Run to Daylight! is part diary, part philosophy text, part coaches manual. Here, is professional football at its best.

Continuing its series of spectacular coffee-table books for the holiday season, Sports Illustrated presents The College Football Book, the ultimate gift for America's most passionate fans. SI launched this series in 2005 with The Football Book, devoted to the professional game. A New York Times best-seller that year, the book has taken root as a perennial, selling more than 200,000 copies to date. Now the editors of Sports Illustrated return to the gridiron, this time to serve the most avid football fans of all. With the best words and pictures SI has to offer, The College Football Book, brings to life the game's unparalleled excitement and pageantry, its legendary players, historic teams and epic rivalries. In 288 pages of the greatest photography and writing available anywhere, The College Football Book spans the sport's history, from its infancy in the 1800s right up to the postseason showdowns of 2008. The book is packed with stunning pictures, award-winning stories, original stats, decade-by-decade all-star teams and iconic artifacts photographed exclusively for this book at the College Football Hall of Fame--the same exciting mix of elements that makes each book in the SI series a must-have for sports fan.

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.

This book will end many arguments— and start some new ones. Any college football fan, no matter where they live now or where their college loyalty lies has opinions about the game. Now, SI's team of experts once and for all settles the questions college football fans have debated since the first kickoff in College Football's Greatest. For instance, which is the greatest program of all time, Alabama or Notre Dame? What about Ohio State? Where do Tim Tebow and Peyton Manning rank among the best college quarterbacks? Which was the better team, the 1995 Cornhuskers or the 2001 Hurricanes? Where would you find the better game-day experience — in Ann Arbor or Baton Rouge? Every facet of the game is debated and evaluated, from running back to coach and everything in between. Throughout this deluxe edition, essays and articles from the Sports Illustrated Archives are paired with the iconic photography that SI is known for and the talented team of editors and writers weigh in with their expert opinions as well as some of their personal favorites. College Football's Greatest is the book that no football fan can be without.

Professional football in the last half century has been a sport marked by relentless innovation. For fans determined to keep up with the changes that have transformed the game, close examination of the coaching footage is a must. In The Games That Changed the Game, Ron Jaworski—pro football’s #1 game-tape guru—breaks down the film from seven of the most momentous contests of the last fifty years, giving readers a drive-by-drive, play-by-play guide to the evolutionary leaps that define the modern NFL. From Sid Gillman’s development of the Vertical Stretch, which launched the era of wide-open passing offenses, to Bill Belichick’s daring defensive game plan in Super Bowl XXXVI, which enabled his outgunned squad to upset the heavily favored St. Louis Rams and usher in the New England Patriots dynasty, the most cutting-edge concepts come alive again through the recollections of nearly seventy coaches and players. You’ll never watch NFL football the same way again.