Jaworski Ron. The Games That Changed the Game

Published in the United States by ESPN Books, an imprint of ESPN, Inc., New York, and Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. 2010 - 369 p.STEVE SABOL
president, NFL Films
Football may be a team sport, but it is a coach’s game. Although Plato compared the human soul to a chariot pulled by the two horses of reason and emotion, coaching in the NFL is mostly a one-horse show. It is obsessed with reason, with rational calculations, with game plans and play sheets. For nearly a century, professional coaches have been designing different ways to arrange eleven men on a field, either to advance or stop the ball.
Today the coaches in the NFL are the most progressive leaders in sports. They are constantly innovating and embracing every new technology. Football changes more than any sport we have. It was Richard Nixon’s favorite sport; it was Hunter S. Thompson’s favorite, too. Football coaches will try anything — the good ones will for sure. They’re gonzo. Hank Stram once told me, “I’m a coach of fixed and unbending principles, the first of which is to be flexible at all times.” Great coaches can do with their players what a magician does with a deck of cards: shuffle the familiar into unexpected patterns.
This book is about seven coaches and seven games in which their innovative game plans not only decided the outcome but also transformed history, because they accelerated in a matter of hours the usually longer evolution of strategy and planning. Football will always be a game of blocking and tackling, as Vince Lombardi once made quite clear. But, as this book points out, it’s also a game of imagination and ingenuity.
I will not go into the details of each game because the gentlemen who have researched and analyzed them — my friends Ron Jaworski, Greg Cosell, and David Plaut — have already done so. All of us who watch Monday Night Football know that Ron Jaworski understands and explains the game at a level of detail never before reached on television. Perhaps even more important is his ability to make others understand the game as well. For more than two decades, Greg Cosell has clarified the nuances of NFL strategy as creator and executive producer of the ESPN NFL Matchup program. Sports Illustrated’s Peter King calls it “the one pregame show that should be essential viewing for the real fan.” Dave Plaut has worked with me at NFL Films for thirty-five years. He has won numerous Emmy awards for both writing and directing. His knowledge of the league’s history is encyclopedic.
There is no inevitability to history; someone has to seize and turn it. In the following pages, you will read about men who met the challenge of the present, and in so doing shaped the future. These seven memorable games are the wildfires of NFL history — the embers of which continue to burn far beyond the original blaze.Foreword By Steve Sabol, president, NFL FilmsSunday No. 1 Sid Gillman’s Vertical Stretch
BOSTON PATRIOTS VS. SAN DIEGO CHARGERS, JANUARY 5, 1964
Sunday No. 2 Bud Carson’s Cover-Two Defense
OAKLAND RAIDERS VS. PITTSBURGH STEELERS, DECEMBER 29, 1974
Sunday No. 3 Don Coryell’s Roving-Y
OAKLAND RAIDERS VS. SAN DIEGO CHARGERS, SEPTEMBER 14, 1980
Sunday No. 4 Bill Walsh’s West Coast Offense
New York GIANTS VS. SAN FRANCISCO 49ERS, JANUARY 3, 1982
Sunday No. 5 Buddy Ryan’s 46 Defense
DALLAS COWBOYS VS CHICAGO BEARS, NOVEMBER 17, 1985
Sunday No. 6 Dick LeBeau’s Zone Blitz
BUFFALO BILLS VS. PITTSBURGH STEELERS, JANUARY 9, 1993
Sunday No. 7 Bill Belichick’s “Bull’s-Eye” Game Plan
ST. LOUIS RAMS VS. NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS, FEBRUARY 3, 2002Appendix: Box Scores