Customer Reviews

More than a Game: The Glorious Present and Uncertain Future of the NFL

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If you want to know what the Cover 2 defense is (and why it is a misnomer), what the zone blitz is (and why it is a misnomer), and what the term "B gap" means, you can find it all here. You can also find out what it is like to be an NFL head coach, after your team loses, and walking into work on that Monday morning ("No one smiles, the coffee doesn't taste as good", etc.). What do coaches think about ? What keeps them up at night ? What defenses in the NFL attack, and which play zone defense ? I liked the mix of history and modern football. Kind of like hanging out for 3 or 4 hours with an NFL coach, and asking him all those questions you have always wanted to ask.

This book is better than you think it will be, coming from another former football coach. It provides a nice overview of the sport, both on the field and off, including a good discussion of the potential labor problems on the horizon. Even for a pretty serious fan, I learned new things about the game, especially offense and defensive strategy. Not a path breaking book, but well written and entertaining. A very good primer for anyone wanting to know more about the NFL.

Billick is terrific in the booth on Fox, and shows here that he has a much better understanding of the game than most NFL coaches currently employed.

Written by former Baltimore Ravens coach Brian Billick, this book is broken down into chapters that focus on specific topics: Presidents, General Managers, Coaches Quarterbacks, Offense, Defense, and so forth. Then the book ends by tying together a common thread throughout: the future of the game.

The book comes at a critical juncture for the NFL as the owners and the NFLPA attempt to renegotiate the collective bargaining agreement that has served the league well over the past decade plus. Football has never been more popular than it is today, and by and large the NFL has never made as much money as it does today.

Billick does a great job of breaking down the issues at stake in the negotiations. A lot of them are financial in nature: what percentage of revenue should go to players' salaries, what revenue streams should be counted in that calculation, how the salary cap and minimum team salaries should be determined, etc. But many of them are not financial: rules surrounding OTA's, for example. How many can teams have? How often can they have them? What types of practices can they be? What types of drills can be run? What role should the league play in post-career healthcare for players?

Outside of the CBA discussion, Billick does a fine job of showing us what it's like to be an employee of the NFL from an insider's perspective. The differences between owners, GMs and coaches... what a typical week looks like for a coach or for a player... why teams hate Thursday night games so much... how commentators overemphasize the importance of the halftime speech in the locker room (by the time everyone goes to the bathroom and gets to the locker room, there's hardly time for a speech, let alone shifting an entire game plan).

The rest of the book was decent - nothing really earth-shattering that fans wouldn't probably already know, but good stuff. For instance, he writes about the Alpha project, a team of people that were assembled a few years back to examine the possibility of extending the regular season to 18 games. Despite revealing the cool sounding codename, he doesn't give any new information about the project. Turns out the league loves it because it will make them more money but players are absolutely opposed to the idea - something we already knew.

One of the most intriguing sections of the book was toward the end when Billick throws out some pretty revolutionary ideas for additional revenue streams for the NFL. For instance, offering fans watching the games at home the chance to pay to get a live feed from the coach's mic into the quarterback's helmet. How cool would it be to know, a handful of seconds before it actually happens, what play your team is going to run? Or to hear some of the chatter a coach tells his QB? Or offering fans the chance to view the official game film online after a game is over (for an additional charge, of course). This would be the exact same game film used by teams to examine their performance, and the performances of opponents coming up on their schedule. Or, how about an addition to cable packages that allows you to watch the pregame and halftime speeches in the locker rooms, see your team in the tunnel before they run out onto the field, and other behind-the-scenes footage before, during, and after the game? I hope he's pitching these to the NFL and that they make some of them happen, because I'd probably pay for some of them.

If you're expecting truly insider information that will rock your world, this probably isn't your book. But if you just want to learn a little more about the way the NFL works, from someone who worked for the NFL, then you'll really enjoy this quick read.

This is an interesting book.

Have always found Brian Billick to be one of the most thoughtful coaches/analysts and in this book, he gives his thoughts on the state of the game today. He discusses the coaching, the management, the NFL management, the players, the business and the future of the game.

It is perhaps not the most engrossing book I have ever read but it is interesting enough to skim through.

I wouldn't rush out to buy it but if you can get it for a good price, get it.

If you're a football geek, this is a must-read. Billick's book (written before the 2009 season) gives an inside look at how the league works on a day-by-day basis and what it takes to succeed. Billick then gives his thoughts on the labor strife that looms larger and larger on the NFL horizon. I found Billick's honest, insider perspective fascinating, and I felt like I knew more about the league after reading the book. Those are both good reasons to recommend this read.

I really enjoyed this book and would recommend it to every NFL fan. I read it in a week and I usually take 3 months to complete a book. This is a great read that explains the back office work that it takes to put our favorite sport in action.

I got this bok for my boyfriend who is a football guru. He reads it every morning on the john and fills me in with all the amazing fun facts about football, as well as my B-more Ravens (Since the book is written by their former coach, Billick)

Brian Billick was the head coach of the Baltimore Ravens for nine years and his team won Super Bowl XXXV thanks mostly to its great defense. Prior to that he was the offensive coordinator of the Minnesota Vikings, at the time one of the most prolific offenses in league history.

Having stepped away from the game for a while Billick has written a nice little monograph on today's game. This is not a biography of Billick or the inside scoop of what it's like to be a head coach in the National Football League, although a little bit of that is in here. Instead is a topical "conversation" about issues facing the National Football League today.

Billick does a nice job explaining some of the modern day offensive and defensive schemes proliferating around the NFL and gives a nice synopsis of the progression of the now pass oriented game of professional football and how that has changed the modern game. He also briefly discusses the "wildcat" offense where the running back takes the snap directly and can either pass or throw the ball. Billick does not think the "wildcat" offense will be around too long as defenses are likely to catch up with it.

The most concerning part of the book is where Billick discusses the collective bargaining agreement between the NFL and the National Football League Players Association (NFLPA), the player's union. If an agreement is not reached there could be a lock out and no football in the near future. Hopefully it will not come to that as professional football has been able to avoid the damaging play stoppage that has plagued other leagues, most notably the National Hockey League, which has yet to recover from its lost season.

There are many other tidbits of football knowledge in this book and it is well worth a read by fans of the National Football League.

Billick states in his prologue that he wanted to write this book to get at the "something else" that is going on in football of which "fans and the media are only dimly aware," and I think he does a very good job of presenting some of these hidden forces. You of course get a lot of information about football strategy, but you also get a much better picture of the politics among owners, how the history of the sport impacts what happens today, and even some intriguing ideas for ways the League could make money in the future. There are large chunks of the book which will become dated in the next few years as the CBA gets negotiated, but it's certainly well worth reading now.

As football books go this one is pretty well written. Informative, good read - not a ton, but some interesting inside info.