Football strategy book recommendations?

by jeager on Dec 28, 2009 2:39 PM PST

Does anyone have a recommendation for one or more football strategy books? I'm looking for something appropriate for someone who reads John Morgan religiously and watches lots of games but otherwise does not have much football knowledge. Ideally, the book or books I'm looking for would compare/contrast different modern offensive and defensive formations, personnel packages, etc. and perhaps provide some historical perspective on their development.

I've decided it's time to increase my football nerdiness.

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

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One suggestion for historical perspective--

go wiki-crazy. Just start searching football terms and read through, and organically follow tangents.

For example, read up on the West Coast Offense and it’s history… it’ll lead you through Bill Walsh, the SD west coast downfield, the Raiders, and everything in between. And you’ll find links through to coaches and players you’ll want to open new tabs on. You’ll find out about some incredible coaching staffs like Cal Berkeley’s young assistants, and the SD crew as well. And then, of course, you’ll start thinking about coaching trees and you’ll start researching them.

Next thing you know, you have 25 tabs open to read through and you just learned a ton of history…

Bird Law in this country isn't governed by reason.

by Tyler Jorgensen on Dec 28, 2009 7:11 PM PST reply actions

Coaching The Defensive Line

By Fritz Shurmur.

by Michael Scott on Dec 28, 2009 8:25 PM PST reply actions

Start with the AFCA books...

“Offensive and Defensive Football Strategies” by the American Football Coaches Association. Two seperate books. They’re more geared to college ball, but they’ll give you a good overview of game planning and how coaches think. Coaches’ Choice has a lot of great books — the Coach of the Year Clinics series are wonderful reading, and CC also has a bunch of great books on individual potision sets. It might be easier to read about the offensive line and the secondary, et al, separately to get the big picture — that’s what I discovered when I found my own strategic knowledge lacking and I had to expand my view on this stuff.

Fritz Shurmur did a few great books before he died — Coaching Team Defense is probably the best. He also did the book Michael mentioned above and another one on the 3-5-3 defense.

But the single best book on football strategy I have in my library is “Finding the Winning Edge” by Bill Walsh. It’s out of print, and the copy I bought on Amazon cost me about 80 bucks. Worth every penny. Walsh goes through gameplanning, team-building, the responsibilities of everyone in a football front office, what he looked for in specific positions … just everything.

by Doug Farrar on Dec 29, 2009 6:17 AM PST reply actions