TAMPA TOM BRADY'S SOUTHERN VACATION: MY AMERICAN COLUMN

For the Thanksgiving issue of The American magazine, I wrote about Tom Brady and his move from the New England Patriots, where for 20 seasons he and coach Bill Belichick have dominated the NFL, to Tampa Bay, which dominated for a year right about the time Brady joined the Bucs.

It was written before the Bucs' back to back 27-24 losses to the Rams and Chiefs, so I might want to update on the team's problems, but the piece mostly delves into the reasons for the football divorce, and the reasons for choosing the Buccaneers as his new place to extend his career into his forties. Now if he only learned to place kick! It worked for George Blanda. You can link to the story here.

IN MEMORIAM: JOE BELLINO & FOOTBALL MEMORIES

When I was a kid I had a book about Joe Bellino, who died a few days ago aged 81. The star of Navy's 1960 football team, which went 9-1 and lost to Missouri in the Orange Bowl, Bellino won the Heisman Trophy overwhelmingly that year; the first Midshipman to win it, and what turned out the first of two Navy players in four seasons, as Roger Staubach followed him in 1963.

The book must've been published after he won the Heisman, so I might have got it for my birthday (which was the day before Joe's on the calendar) or it might have been the following Christmas. I suspect the latter, because although my dad was a Navy fan, having enlisted at 17 during World War II, I think we may have spent Christmas in Boston that year, and my Uncle Jack might have picked it up for me. Which is also a sign of how much I loved football in my youth.

In any case, I remember some of the book very well, especially about Bellino's exploits at Winchester High in Massachusetts. He was, apparently, known as 'The Wnchester Rifle' but honestly I didn't remember that at all. Besides football, he was a baseball star good enough to get drafted by the Pirates, and as a basketball player led Winchester to two championships before the school was moved up a division and they lost a third. In those days we paid attention to the Massachusetts' large school champs, because the two (from Eastern and Western Mass) would join two Connecticut schools and one each from the other four New England states in an annual high school tournament at the Boston Garden, an even dominated by Connecticut teams.

Doing some research, I also recalled Bellino did a post-grad year, at Columbian Academy,

where he scored three touchdowns against the Navy plebes (freshman) team in an upset win. This was ironic, since I would go to a prep school where we took in post-grads; my junior and senior years I would be the only one from my class not a PG who played. He would have done that to get his grade point average or his SAT scores up to the required level for admission, and interestingly Staubach did the same, at New Mexico Military Academy, in the alien-visit town of Roswell.

Of course that made both of them a year more mature when they started college, and each would have played on freshman teams before becoming eligible for the varsity. You can find some film on Bellino on you tube. He was listed at 5-9 185, and he is built low to the ground and strong-legged. You can see him break tackles easily; he has good vision and most of all surprising speed (he led the Navy baseball team in stolen bases).

Navy was never as much of a power as Army—West Point's greatest teams, of course, came toward the end of World War II, when they had older players like Doc Blanchard and Glenn Davis who were grabbed by the army from other colleges. Navy had a great team coached by Paul Brown at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station near Chicago, but they weren't at the Academy. But under coach Wayne Hardin (with Steve Belichick, Bills father as a scout/assistant) Navy had a brief flowering in the early Sixties. The service academies were beginning to shrink: Yale had beaten Army in 1956, and Air Force had come into being and taken some glamour away. But as the lure of professional football grew (and the money) the four year commitment required in the service in return for your college education became a negative selling point. Nowadays the academies often waive the requirement to allow players into the NFL, and cash in on the patriotic publicity: back in the day Gen. Maxwell Taylor backed down from allowing Davis and Blanchard to go to the NFL, and neither Bellino or Staubach seemed to hesitate with their commitments. I can't begin to tell you how inspirational the book made Joe Bellino appear; I recall seeing picture of young Bill throwing a ball with Bellino and reading something about how he idolized him, and I could understand why. For a brief while, until Vietnam War protest radicalized me at age 15 or 16, I had a thought of going to Navy as well.

Ironically, when I was a sophomore at Wesleyan, we scrimmaged Army (well, mostly their second-string) at West Point, and at lunch in the huge mess hall, as cadets leapt onto our table screaming at us (the word 'hippie' might have sounded) I didn't regret my decision. We won that scrimmage, and went undefeated that season back at Division III, winning the Lambert Cup, the small version of the Lambert Trophy Navy won in 1960, as the top team in the East.

That Navy team was good. They had beaten Army the year before; Bellino scored three touchdowns in that game, no one had ever done that in an Army-Nevy game before. They were still lightly-regarded, but early in the season they beat Washington, with Bob Schloredt at QB, in Seattle; Washington would beat number one Minnesota in the Rose Bowl (the polls closed well before the New Year's Bowl Games in those days). Washington coach Jim Owens said 'he made us look like we hadn't practised tackling'. They beat Notre Dame, and took their only loss at Duke 19-10; Duke wound up rated number 10 and beat no.7 Arkansas (with Lance Alworth) in the Cotton Bowl. Goes to show you what the pollsters know. Navy was ranked number 4 (no. 2 Mississippi beat Rice in the Sugar Bowl; no.3 Iowa was second in the Big Ten and thus couldn't go to any bowl game). Missouri was ranked 5, and unbeaten, but with an asterisk, and looking that up I remembered the scandal vividly.

Kansas beat Missouri but had to forfeit that game (and one to Colorado) for playing Bert Coan at halftime, because TCU had violated rules recruiting Coan, who then transferred to Kansas. This was the Kansas team that had John Hadl still playing halfback, but with Coan joining Curtis McClinton, they moved him to quarterback in 1961. Coan, like McClinton, was big (6-4 215) but ran a 9.4 100 yards. His pro career never panned out, while McClinton had a good one with the Chiefs. 

Bellino's senior season was pretty spectacular. He ran for 834 yards at 5.0 per carry, caught 15 passes for 264 yards and 3 TDs. He threw two TD passes (though he was only 5/14 passing), quick-kicked (!) 11 times for a 47 yard average (a lot of rolling involved there) returned kicks , kicked a couple of extra points and like most of the players in the game, played defense too.

He won the Heisman in a runaway. Check out the photo at the top and compare with the Heisman pose! With points allotted 3-2-1 for first, second and third place votes he had 1,793 points; second place went to Minnesota guard Tom Brown, with 731. Yes, guard. Yes, he did play both ways, but still, football was a different game then. Third was Ol' Miss quarterback Jake Gibbs, who became a catcher for the Yankees and Senators. Gibbs was second in the South and Southwest; Brown in the mid-west, and UCLA tailback Billy Kilmer second in the west (he finished fifth. Mike Ditka was sixth; Ohio State quarterback Tom Matte (a halfback in the NFL with the Colts) was seventh, and center/linebacker EJ Holub of Texas Tech was 10^th: Holub would be the only player to start Super Bowls on both sides of the ball, center in one, linebacker in another, for the Chiefs. One name that I hadn't thought of in years was Pervis Atkins of New Mexico State, who was ninth in the voting but had an unsuccessful career in the NFL/AFL (but acted in the The Longest Yard).

1960 was an interesting year; I watched undefeated Yale play that year; they wound up ranked no14 in the country. Yale's Ben Balme was the other starting guard on the AP All-America team, but center Mike Pyle had a long career with the Chicago Bears. The quarterback Tom Singleton got written up in Sports Illustrated; he threw 70 passes all year, while the fullback Bob Blanchard was the running threat; he was a local hero from Hamden just outside New Haven.

In the rest of the country outside Connecticut, Norman Snead and Roman Gabriel were the 'best' NFL QBs, while Ernie Davis was just starting at 7-3 Syracuse and Bob Lilly was at TCU.

In the Orange Bowl, Missouri beat Navy 21-14, ending Joe's career with a loss. He was shut down completely as a runner, though he caught a touchdown pass. And it was the end of his football glory too. Because of the four-year commitment, he wasn't drafted until the 17^th round by Washington (pick 227); in the AFL draft he lasted until the Pats took him in the 19^th round (pick 146). He graduated in 1961; he joined Boston in 1965. He didn't play much, and mostly as a kick returner; he seems to have been effective as a pass catcher, but not as a runner. The years off obviously hurt. Although, in 1963 he was stationed in Newport Rhode Island, and he played for the Providence Steamroller of the Atlantic Coast Football League.

I knew the ACFL well too: those were the years when the Ansonia Black Knights played in the league, but it was a semi-pro operation. Later some teams would join the Continental League, then a couple return to the ACFL for a couple of pretty good years when teams were actual feeders to NFL teams. Oddly enough, Wayne Hardin's college coaching career would come to a screeching halt in 1966 when he went to the Continental League and coached the Philadelphia Bulldogs to the title. Why, I do not know, but Bill Walsh came out of the CFL too.

I couldn't find any stat line for Bellino, but he scored three TDs, and I believe played only three games for Providence. The Steamroller went 6-6 in the league (and won three exhibition games, two against non-league teams). They played the Boston Nu-Way Sweepers three times (one an exhibition) which I mention only because I love the name.

They beat the Black Knights in Ansonia, and beat the Harrisburg Capitols in the third-place (runner-up) in the post-season. While he was playing before small crowds, Staubach was winning the Heisman for the 1963 season; leading Navy to another 9-1 season. They were ranked number 2 in the country, despite losing 24-22 to SMU in the Cotton Bowl stadium in Dallas; they handed number four Pittsburgh their only loss of the year. They suffered another post-season loss, to top-ranked Texas in the Cotton Bowl game, meaning they were unbeaten outside the Cotton Bowl that year.

Writing this I feel a lot like the ten-year old kid who loved playing touch football (the Kennedys had turned us on to that), wanted to follow in my father's football-playing footsteps, read coaching guides from the 1930s that advised punting on first down inside your ten, and made football cards from magazine pictures and created a probability game, APBA-style, after sending for their free sample then making my own charts. It was so much fun, and so much simpler then.

Joe Bellino didn't leave the Navy after four years just to try pro football. His son was stillborn when he was on a ship in the Atlantic; his mother-in-law died while he was in Japan. As it was, he served 24 years in the naval reserve after his pro career ended (he was taken by the Bengals in the AFL expansion draft but retired rather than move to Cincinnati) and retired a captain. He was a successful businessman in Massachusetts, and is a member of the College Football Hall of Fame. RIP.

SUPER BOWL LII: A FRIDAY MORNING TIGHT END SPECIAL

It was a great Super Bowl, but you knew that already. Back in the day, when I was writing Friday Morning Tight End, I would do a wrap-up of the Super Bowl, analysing why I picked it right or wrong (more often wrong). But now as my nfluk.com column is simply predictions, I thought I'd share a few thoughts on the game with you here.

I did get the Super Bowl pick wrong, though if you read my column last week you'll see I tried very hard to pick the Eagles. In the end I switched to the Pats, and seriously, with two minutes left and New England down five I didn't really doubt they'd pull off another comeback, and I'd be right both on picking them outright and picking the Eagles plus 5.5 points as a best bet.

This season my picks were better than last year's in the regular season: 173-83 or 67.6%. It took a while for the season to fall into place, but between weeks 7 and 16, before the black hole that is week 17, I went 114-35. 173 right would have placed me sixth on the list at nfl pickwatch, ahead of everybody at ESPN, NFL Network, CBC or MMQB. Last year I improved in the playoffs to 10-1; this year I slipped to 6-5. That left me overall at 179-88 on the season (67%) compared with 178-87-2 (67.2%) in 2016. At least I'm consistent! However in the 13 seasons I have picked every one of the 267 games a year for nfluk, I have been only 5-8 picking the Super Bowl! I'm like the Vikings or the Bills.

Once again, I was lucky enough to be in the BBC booth with Mark Chapman, Osi Umeniyora, and Jason Bell. I wish you could hear the conversations as the game goes on, because it's both fun and instructive. I usually forget which things I said on air and which ones just to to guys, but early on I remarked that this was like watching Texas Tech play Baylor: a wide open offensive shootout. The absorption of college spread and option concepts into the NFL game is fully upon us when you can see both teams going empty on multiple downs. And interestingly, the one thing about the game that seemed most predictable, that the Eagles' front four would bedevil the Pats' O line, didn't come true, but what was fascinating was the way Jim Schwartz covered the Pats. Man coverage on Rob Gronkowski usually fell to Corey Graham, who was signed as a free agent after Buffalo released him; he'd played with Ronald Darby and for Schwartz in Buffalo, but you may remember him for his interception for the Ravens in the Super Bowl win over Denver. Graham is one of many sharp free-agent acquisitions by Eagles' GM Howie Roseman. I've often thought the relative failure of the Chip Kelly era in Philly was due less to lack of coaching skill and more to lack of acumen in the front office, from which he had forced Roseman out. When you looked at the 'how they were built' charts for the two Super Bowl teams, you saw a very close parallel in the way both the Eagles and Pats had rebuilt in the past two seasons, with astute and mostly bargain free agency signings.

Graham's coverage was Gronkowski wasn't simple. When Gronk attacked the middle of the field, the Eagles were often showing a cover-two look, but it would quickly morph into something like a cover-1 robber: one safety stepping up to take away the lead to Gronk, the other playing coverage deep. Also putting Graham on Gronk also left Malcolm Jenkins free to shadow the running backs: note James White's receiving role was severely limited. Tactically, that more than made up for the Pats' ability to neutralise the Eagles' front four.

Offensively, the audacity of the Philly Special play call was probably the signature moment of the game. I had no doubt Doug Pederson would go for it on fourth and goal at the one, and couldn't understand why Cris Collinsworth was making it seem such a strange call. Remember the Eagles in the last minute of the first half against Minnesota; remember too the Jags kneeling out that final minute with a four-point lead over the Pats. You don't beat New England by being conservative. That they scored running a similar play to the pass Tom Brady could not catch was indeed audacious. It also reminded me of the Brady-Wes Welker miss in the second loss to the Giants: a completion to the wide open receiver seals the game for the Pats. It seemed like a bad omen. After the Super Bowl ex-supervisor of refs Mike Pereira came alive from the Fox COMMAND CENTER, probably to reinforce the idea NBC had no former ref to give commentary on referring decisions: he said the Eagles were definitely in an illegal formation on the Philly special, but that it was a 'judgement call'. Now the story in the game was that Jeffrey checked to make sure he was on the line, and the line judge told them he was, even though he was two yards back.

The problem is not the receiver and the line of scrimmage, the problem is the officials allow players to align with the player inside them. I have complained about this with Andy Reid teams in particular, but the Eagles and their tackles too. If for example the tackle aligns his inside front toe with the guard's outside heel, the tackle can be two yards off the line of scrimmage. I believe the line judge saw Jeffrey aligned with Lane Johnson's back leg and thus told him he was OK, even though he was almost two and half yards off the line of scrimmage. It made no difference on this play, actually, as no one assumed Johnson was eligible. But allowing tackles to line up so far off the line of scrimmage gives them at least a one step advantage over pass rushers, and shouldn't be allowed.

The key to the Patriots' bend-but-don't-break defense is being able to get stops on third downs: knowing what the offense needs to do and likes to do in those situations is a key. But the Eagles were a team living on third and longs and converting them regularly—not just against the Pats and not just with Nick Foles at QB. This is where they beat the Pats, beating them at situational football.

At one point in the second half, I said to the guys 'all it is going to take is one stop', and of course the Eagles got that stop on the Brandon Graham strip sack. But part of the reason we were in that situation was that the Pats had, in effect, been stopped twice on successive drives in the first half. First when Brandin Cooks couldn't convert a third and two on his sweep and Rodney McLeod power-bombed him. The Pats then missed the short field goal on fourth and one at the eight. I wasn't surprised Bill Belichick eschewed going for it, and decided to tie the game at three, but the bad snap killed them, and the Eagles' willing to go for it on fourth and one would stand in contrast.

I was reminded or haunted by the Giants another time. Maybe it was standing next to Osi in the booth. The Eagles launched their only punt on the next drive, and the Pats then failed on third and fourth and five at the Eagles' 35. Perhaps bothered by the previous miss of the chippie, Belichick eschewed a 52 yard field goal, which reminded me of his passing from a similar distance in the 2007 loss to the Giants; Gostkowski had mis-hit a kickoff previously and it was as if he were being punished. The fourth down pass to Gronk went incomplete, but I wondered even if taking a delay penalty and punting might have been preferable.

The Pats missed their chance for a stop early in the second half when Johnson Bademosi couldn't tackle Nelson Agholor on a crossing route on third down and six. This was the effect of Belichick's benching Malcolm Butler. The knock-on effect wasn't just Eric Rowe starting outside: I'm not sure Butler would have made a better play on the TD to Alshon Jeffrey. But it took Rowe and his long arms out of the middle of the field, and it left the Pats in big nickle on third downs, with Patrick Chung having to cover wideouts. When they went to dime it brought safety Jordan Richards in, and he's so awful in coverage (Clement's 55 yard catch being an example) Bademosi eventually took his spot. What no one noted was that New England's number four corner, Jonathan Jones, was on IR: Jones is their quickest DB, and his absence pushed Bademosi into that fourth spot. Butler's benching pushed Bademosi up higher. There was a point when I thought whatever Butler was being punished for, he was clearly upset, and he was on the sidelines, and it might have been a moment to tell him to make up for his mistakes on the field.

Again, I flashed back to a previous Super Bowl, when Butler made that great play on Jerome Kearse and Kearse made the great catch which preceded Butler's goal-line pick. If you recall Duron Harmon's pick in this game, think back and you'll see Harmon jump over Kearse while the ball was still loose--not making a play on the receiver. This time, in almost the same spot on the field, the ball popped up, and Harmon made the play. 

I was also puzzled by the absence of Dwight Allen. I saw him on only one offensive play, going in motion in order to pass block, but I wondered, especially after Cooks' concussion, if two tight ends might have been an option (not that the Pats' offense was misfiring). I'd also thought we'd see more two and three tight end sets from the Eagles, but of course with Butler out, the wide receivers got more play. And I would not be surprised if the success of the Pats' offense was a major factor in their last minute 180 on keeping Josh McDaniels around.

If there were one play Brady might want back, it would be on first down from the 9 after the failed kickoff reverse. Chris Hogan was open on the sidelines 30 yards up field, and Brady just misfired on the pass. A completion stops the clock and puts them near the 40. It was interesting to watch New England give up on Gostkowski's short kickoffs, because the Eagles were getting returns out to the 25, and settle for touchbacks. New England had taken the touchbacks previously: the reverse was not well executed, partly because the coverage got to Lewis so quickly there wasn't room for a good lateral. Just as the Eagles' offense took away the third-down advantage from the Pats, they won the battle of special teams as well. The fact that the Patriots ran up 600 yards and 33 points on the league's best or second-best defense was a win for their offense, but they lost two of the other three phases.

It was also strange that the two TD catches that were reviewed took so long to be decided (although the second one did add precious time for the Eagles' D line to catch their breath!). Corey Clement's catch (a perfectly thrown ball from Foles) was to me a catch, but the way he let the ball slide across his belly from right hand to left is precisely the loss of 'control' while 'going to the ground' that the league had ruled incomplete all season long. This is frustrating, but you could just see the replay official thinking, or being reminded, not to take yet another TD away from a Patriots' opponent, because the league clearly fixes games for the Pats, as the Brady suspension proved last year. I think much of the problem would be solved if the league would simply change the definition from 'control' to 'possession': you can lose control of the ball but still maintain possession of it, which was exactly what Clement had done.

Why the Ertz TD was reviewed at such length was a puzzle. How man steps with the ball, or movements of it, do you have to make before the league considers you transformed into a runner? Again, the rule and interpretation could be simplified: by going back to the old catch rule of possession with both feet down. Sure that would lead to more fumbles, and half the time the NFL has no idea who actually recovered the fumble before the pile began, and sure that could lead to fewer scores, but really, less is more, and as we know the NFL feels more is always better, so less is thus better. Got it?

Anyway, a pass interference call on the Hail Mary would have made things really interesting, right?

BTW, if you'd like to see more football columns during the off-season, let me know, OK? Thanks for reading, watching, and supporting. It's appreciated.

SUPER BOWL SPECIAL: ACE ATKINS' ROBERT B PARKER'S CHEAP SHOT

I read Cheap Shot on the flight to Minneapolis for Super Bowl LII, and considering the plot revolves around a New England Patriots' player whom Spencer is hired to protect/keep out of trouble, it seemed appropriate.

The trouble, of course, finds star linebacker Kinjo Heywood, in a way both unexpected and more severe than we might expect when his son is kidnapped. Immediately Spenser is in his usual wisecracking trouble with the head of security for the Pats, with Heywood's agent, his business manager/brother, and the FBI, all of whom want him off the case. And it's a complicated case, going back to a nightclub shooting in New York a couple of years before, which may have involved Heywood's crew. It's as if Ray Lewis had come back to play for Bill Belichick.

I've reviewed Ace Atkins' Spenser before, you can link to that here, and he gets the tone of the Parker novels better than any of the others I've read who've been carrying on with the characters. Like Lullaby, the main villain remains off-stage for most of the book, and in some ways we wonder if at least one of the sub-plots has been overlooked in the end. It was a complicated web which Atkins wove around the star player, which reflects perfectly the world of high-paid athletes in a violent, short-career sport.

One problem with the first-person narration is trying to fill out characters so we understand, not necssarily them, but their effect on others. In this case, Heywood's second-wife seems sketchily drawn, and what we see of her leads us to wonder exactly what Heywood sees in her. While it's obvious what Hawk sees in Heywood's first wife, and long-time readers might feel disappointed not to see Hawk tamed at last.

Atkins does with Spenser what Parker did: build fast moving stories that centre on personalities, and Cheap Shot is another good example. Even if the Patriots did lose the Super Bowl without Heywood.

Robert B Parker's Cheap Shot by Ace Atkins
No Exit Press, £8.99, ISBN 9781843444497 

NOTE; This review will also appear at Crime Time (www.crimetime.co.uk)

SUPER BOWL LII: THE SUPER BOWL SHUFFLE

One of the most interesting side stories in Super Bowl LII is the overlap of players between the two teams, interesting enough for me to write this piece and send it to a website where I have written before, who forwarded it their live sports department, who lost it for a couple of days, then let me know there was no space for it. So I offer it here, as an IT Super Bowl Special. Note that it's written assuming most things need to be explained. Note too, on the topic of explanation, I will be covering the game for the BBC on Sunday....

PATRIOTS AND EAGLES: THE SUPER BOWL SHUFFLE 

In last year's amazing Super Bowl comeback victory by the New England Patriots, defensive end Chris Long made one of the game's biggest 'hidden' plays, drawing a holding penalty against Atlanta's Jake Matthews, which helped push the Falcons out of range for a field goal that might have made their lead unassailable. Last year running back LaGarrette Blount scored 18 touchdowns for the Patriots, leading the league, but after a fumble in the Super Bowl, he didn't see the field again.

This year both Long and Blount are returning to the Super Bowl, but with the Philadelphia Eagles, not the Patriots. Their quest to stop the seeming inevitability of another Patriots trophy gives them a chance to do what only five other players have ever done: win Super Bowl rings in consecutive years, but with two different teams.

Oddly enough, three of those five players did it while having to beat their previous team along the way. Ken Norton, Jr, son of the heavyweight boxing champ, actually won three in a row: with Dallas in 1992 and 1993, after which he moved to San Francisco to win with the 49ers in 1994. His teammate that year was 'Neon' Deion Sanders; in 1995 Sanders won with the Cowboys.

Brandon Browner became the only player to get his second ring while beating the team with which he got his first. Though with an asterisk.  Browner got a ring with Seattle Seahawks, although he missed the second half of the 2013 season and the playoffs. The next year he was with the Patriots when they beat Seattle 28-24 in the Super Bowl; his awareness of his old team's plays helped Malcolm Butler make the game-saving interception in that one.

No one remembers Derrick Martin, a reserve defensive back who collected rings with Green Bay in 2010 and the New York Giants in 2011. Even fewer remember Russ Hochstein, another three-ring player. Hochstein, a backup lineman, played in only one game with Tampa Bay in 2002 and was released before they won the Super Bowl, but received a ring anyway. He was signed by the Patriots, where he wound up starting briefly and winning rings for the 2003 and 2004 seasons. Former Tampa defensive star Warren Sapp guaranteed the Patriots would lose a Super Bowl because Hochstein was starting, saying he had no talent. The Pats and Hochstein won anyway.

The presence Long and Blount on the Eagles' roster highlights a Venn diagram of convergence between the teams. Long made two key plays for the Eagles' in their conference championship win over Minnesota: hitting quarterback Case Keenum to force an intercepted pass which was returned for a touchdown, and then recovering a Keenum fumble which led to another score. Long had played in New England on a year-year contract, after a long career of frustration with the Rams; he sought a new challenge with the Eagles. In effect, he played this year simply for that challenge; he donated his base salary for the season to educational charities.

Long's pass rush ability was orchestrated by Eagles' defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz, known for his aggressive blitzing, a defensive strategy almost opposite of New England's 'bend but don't break' containment. But Schwartz got his first job in the NFL with Patriots' coach Bill Belichick, when Belichick was coaching the Cleveland Browns and hired the young Schwartz as a scout. Then Schwartz got his first coaching job in Baltimore under Belichick disciple Ozzie Newsome. Another ex-Pat in the Eagles' defense is linebacker Kamu Grugier-Hill, whose ability to play on special teams (kicking plays) is the core of his value.

Blount wasn't offered a new contract by the Patriots, and signed with the Eagles as the power-running part of a committee of rushers. His role diminished in mid-season when Philadelphia traded for London-born running back Jay Ajayi, who'd fallen out of favour in Miami and was thus available relatively cheaply. But the combination of the two allows the Eagles to batter and wear down opposing defenses.

It's not all one-way traffic, however. The Patriots' leading rusher is Dion Lewis, who came into the league with the Eagles, but was released after a series of injuries, and eventually signed by New England off the street when no other team was interested. The star of the Patriots' comeback victory in their conference final against Jacksonville was Danny Amendola, a slot receiver who was signed by the Eagles after Dallas released him, and then claimed by the Rams where he had five seasons before New England signed him to replace Wes Welker, which is exactly what Amendola had done in college at Texas Tech. New England's offensive coordinator is Josh McDaniels; McDaniels had coached Amendola in his one year as offensive coordinator with the Rams.

On defense, cornerback Eric Rowe will match up against his old team after being acquired in a trade last season. Rowe's price was the same as what the Eagles paid for Ajayi, a fourth-round pick in the draft of college players, so you could say everything evens out. And a key defensive player for the Pats, safety Patrick Chung, left New England for Philadelphia in 2013, to play for his old college coach, Chip Kelly with the Eagles. After one season, Chung was released, and resigned with the Pats, where he's been a starter ever since.

In today's NFL, where salary caps put pressures on the huge 53 man rosters, and free agency can price out a team's star players, building a roster in creative fashion can help perpetuate success. This is what the Patriots have been known for in the Belichick-Tom Brady era; that the Eagles are showing the same sort of acumen makes the cross-over of talent between the teams no surprise, and helps explain why the two are in the Super Bowl.

TACTICAL PERIODISATION & SPORTING APPRECIATION: My Lost NFLUK Column

Note: I wrote this Thursday for the resumption of my off-season Friday Monthly Tight End column at nfluk.com. After filing, though, I was told that the off-season column wouldn't be needed for the website; though I will be back with my weekly picks of all the games once the season begins. It was a shame, because the column was timely, given last Saturday's Guardian article, Tuesday's European Champions League match, and my being on Talksport2's Tuesday NFL programme. So I'm posting it here, for you gridiron fans, and you non-gridiron fans...

Earlier this week, someone at @nfluk tweeted the following: “This ManCity v AS Monaco game is nearly as good as SBLI.”(That's Super Bowl 51, not Savings Bank Life Insurance, or China's Super Bowl Li, to you uninitiated.)

Pretty much accurate, and totally innocuous, you'd think. I didn't see the tweet until after the match ended but I responded then that Monaco had turned into the Atlanta Falcons of the ECL: unable to change their high-speed all-out attack mode when they needed to. After I finished my radio show, I happened to look at the responses to the original tweet. I should not have been surprised that many of them were harsh attacks on American football, the old 'sissies wearing pads' and 'action stopping' arguments I've been hearing for 40 years.

It's hard to understand such antipathy, apart from the fact that twitter is twitter, and British sport is tribal in nature, but I've always tried to appreciate sports for their own strong points, and frankly, that isn't hard to do. I've done it on air with guys like Martin Johnson, Brian Moore and Martin O'Neill, having constructive discussion about the ways sports can learn from each other. It's helped me gain a lot more insight into American football as well as rugby and football (or the sports the English call rugger and soccer).

Coincidentally, Nat Coombs and I had discussed just that on Talksport's NFL show the same night. We'd actually been watching the Man City-Monaco match before the show aired, but we had already planned to talk about the concept of 'tactical periodisation', following an excellent Guardian article by Gerard Meagher about Eddie Jones and England rugby. It's a concept Jones borrowed from football, where its most celebrated adherent is Jose Mourinho, and Jones got it from Alberto Mendez, and then from Pep Guardiola. It's about integrating skills, fitness, and what they call 'tactical and mental awareness' (ie: the stuff English football mostly ignored for many decades, in favour of 'luck' and 'bottle') in specific and often high-speed training. As Jones put it, 'everything is done in preparation for the game and in order to be tactically aware'.

Doesn't that remind you of someone in the NFL? Wasn't that on display in the Super Bowl? Do you remember when I wrote on nfluk.com immediately after the Super Bowl about New England and 'situational football'?

The Patriots are famously one of the few teams who will alter their game plans, on both sides of the ball, week in and week out, trying to fine tune their skills to the opposition's. We saw it in the Super Bowl, where the Falcons' offense seemed to be unstoppable for much of the game, but ground to a halt in the final quarter. When you look deeper you discover Atlanta converted only one of eight third downs in the game, and that was on a penalty. Their offense, for all its drive, was depending on big plays; they scored only three touchdowns; many of us figured if they were held under 30 the Pats could win. And at halftime, apparently, the Pats realised they were indeed moving the ball themselves, they just had to eliminate mistakes from their game, and force them from the other side. Recall Wales missing touch on a crucial clearance from their own 22 against England: England had not one but three of their 'best footballers': Ford, Farrell and Daly already back for the kick; Daly scored the winning try untouched.

This combination of the players recognising the tactical situation and the preparation to take advantage of it is the epitome of what New England do, and many teams don't. Think of Gostkowski's coffin-corner kickoffs in the second half. Watch the 'Do Your Job' video about Super Bowl 49, where the Pats prepared for the pass play Butler intercepted. Or where Belichick preached situational football with your back to the goal, and you want to draw the defense offside, which they did, and avoided the safety while giving Brady room for the kneel.

Jones also talked about what he'd learned from the sport Aussies call soccer. The games are similar, he said, because 'you always want to move the ball into space.' This was a key in the Super Bowl. The Falcons game plan was aimed at taking away the space in the middle of the field where the Pats like to cross receivers. They varied their coverage, playing some 'robber' looks hidden behind their cover-one; one such was the pick six. But New England switched toward sidelines-heavy routes in the fourth quarter, counting on the extra half-step gained on lone defenders. Brady's pass to Amendola early in OT, a long-out thrown into space before Amendola had even made his cut, was one of the best throws of the season. It reminded me too that Bill Belichick had done something similar to Buffalo when the Giants beat them in the Super Bowl; in the second half he took away Jim Kelly's successful pass routes, and Kelly never was able to adjust.

Under Jones this season England has rallied to snatch wins over France and Wales. Part of this, of course, is due to their depth of talent; in the Pats' case the talent level may not be at as high a level, but down the depth chart less talented players execute their specific roles. England also rotate their big guys through, situationally more than just for rest. I was fascinated to hear Jones say that they have a system which measures the time it takes their players to get up off the ground; that explained to me why they would sub out some of their more successful guys, especially on the front row, in the second half. Much as I dislike the increasing computerization of modern sport, it is significant in rugby, which has gone from no substitutes to almost wholesale substitution in the time I've followed it. Substitution was once upon a time one of the things partisan critics said they hated about American sport in general (along with a plethora of other things Britain has adopted from us Yanks, to wit: all-seater stadia, squad numbers, names on jerseys, football on Sundays or Monday nights instead of 3pm Saturday etc ad infinitum) but as I said, there is always something to be learned. And I'm always surprised when people can't, or won't because they don't want to, learn it.

TRUMP AND BELICHICK: MY FMTE ANALYSIS

I wrote what follows as the introduction to my Friday Morning Tight End column at nfluk.com, except the column is now actually christened simply picks of the week's upcoming games, and accordingly the intro wasn't a part of it. So I offer it here, wondering what kind of juju the The Donald connection will have on Bill and the Pats...

FRIDAY MORNING TIGHT END WEEK 10:

IT WAS BILL WHAT WON IT? 

The one thing Bill Belichick's letter to Donald Trump proved was that Bill can make a winner out of just about anyone. The bizarre thing about it was that it read as if it had been written (well, dictated) by The Donald himself. I doubt it was intended to be read out at a press conference, as Bill explained it well enough, the two are friends, and it was a friend's congratulations on his campaign, not intended as a public endorsement. With friends like these, a neutral might think. Trump also claimed Tom Brady had voted for him, when Brady at that point hadn't voted at all, and Giselle then said no they wouldn't vote for Trump and told TB to shut up about it! As a model she would probably know a side of Trump that Bill and Brady didn't.

This puts Bill and Rex Ryan on the same team for the first time, and raises an interesting dilemma. Football coaches tend to be very conservative, small c, and so do players. It's an authoritarian sport, everybody is wealthy to an extent, and although most players have natural advantages in terms of size, speed or ability, they also work very hard and feel they have earned what they have, and everyone else should work as hard to do the same. America is a relatively conservative country; its liberals are far less left than in most western countries. But as we saw with the reaction to Rex when he appeared at a Trump rally, Trump's positions on minorities in particular transcend some of the usual definitions. Will there be fallout? There was much talk about that with Rex earlier in the season, but as far as I've seen, nothing really came of it.

In the opening scene of Aaron Sorkin's show The Newsroom, Jeff Daniels talks about how America isn't the greatest country in the world. But it sure used to be, he says (Sorkin might've given Trump his campaign slogan right there). Among the reasons, he says, was that 'we didn't define ourselves by who we voted for'. That might be a good lesson to learn this week..

WHAT WINS FOOTBALL CHAMPIONSHIPS?

If you're not interested in football you might not realise that during the NFL season I write a weekly column called Friday Morning Tight End for nfluk.com. Because there were no games to preview last week, and because this year's Super Bowl matches up two teams that play extremely physically up front, I used the extra space to discuss the old issue of whether a good defense beats a good offense. This week's FMTE column, with a Super Bowl preview and an analysis of the NFL's Deer Hunter, Ray Lewis, will be up at nfluk.com tomorrow...

Around Super Bowl time, some fogeys older than myself like to quote the old adage that says 'defense wins championships'. They also say you need an 'elite' quarterback or an 'elite' running back to win, and that's easily disproved. Although we think of teams with 'great' defenses, and remember the Super Bowls they have won, few Super Bowls match great offenses vs great defenses, and of the recent games where you might argue defense did win it, you could only call two or three of those teams great defenses (2000 Ravens, 2002 Bucs, maybe 2005 Steelers). We look at the adage when we see great offenses getting stopped by less than immortal defenses: the Patriots beating the Rams, the Giants doing it twice to the Pats. And you can certainly argue that the Saints beat the Colts because they played better defense. Super Bowl winners generally don't establish any trend at all, though in any game you can always try to say the winning team played better defense. But did defense win the championship?

The guys who claim it does often quote the table of the highest-scoring teams in NFL history. They'll tell you that, in the Super Bowl era, there were 28 teams that averaged 30 points per game or more, and only five won the Super Bowl. Interestingly, in the pre-Super Bowl era the numbers were 7 of 23, including the highest-scoring team of all time, the 1950 Rams, who averaged 38.8 ppg, went 9-3, and lost the NFL title game. In the Super Bowl era, the highest scoring teams are the 2007 Pats (36.8), 2011 Packers (35.0), 2012 Pats (34.8) 1998 Vikes (34.75),and the 2011 Saints 34.2. None of them won the Super Bowl; in fact only the 2007 Pats even made it to the big game. Note that the 07 Pats and 98 Vikes had something in common, besides not winning the Super Bowl, namely Randy Moss, who happens to be playing for the Niners this season.

Consider the 1948 Cardinals, who averaged 32.9 points per game, but lost the NFL championship to the Steve Van Buren Eagles 7-0. Did they lose because defense beat offense? Those Eagles averaged 31.2 points per game, themselves, and the one-touchdown game was due more to the awful weather conditions than anything else. Were these teams high-scoring because the AAFC was draining off a lot of the better players from the NFL (they would merge in 1950)? You always have to account for context; thus it's no coincidence four of the top five scoring teams of the Super Bowl era played in the past five seasons.

Context is even more important when you do what few pundits sever bother to do, and reverse the equation. If defense wins championships, how come the stingiest D of all time, the 1977 Atlanta Falcons, allowing only 9.2 ppg, went 7-7 and didn't even make the playoffs? The best of the Steel Curtain teams, the '76 Steelers, allowing only 9.9 ppg, shutting out five of their last eight opponents and holding two of the other three to a field goal, went 10-4 and lost the Conference championship 24-7 to the Raiders. It's context again; of the ten 'best' defenses of the Super Bowl era, in terms of points per game allowed, nine played between 1968 and 1977—after which point Bill Walsh and the competition committee relaxed the blocking rules, reduced contact on receivers, and made the West Coast offense possible. So those teams were losing to each other, or to teams that allowed 11 or 12 points a game, like the 66 Packers or the 72 and 73 Dolphins.

Indeed, of the 30 defenses, 12 either didn't make the playoffs at all or lost in the first round. So considering their era, the 2000 Ravens, tied for eighth best with the '68 Colts (who lost the Super Bowl to the Jets), have a great argument to be considered the best defense ever, especially when you realise their so-called pathetic offense (which still averaged 20.8ppg) allowed two touchdowns, which means their D actually gave up only 9.2 ppg, same as the '77 Falcons, in a much more high-scoring league. A similar argument might be made for the '85 Bears, who allowed 12.4 ppg but averaged 28.5 and won the Super Bowl, or the 2002 Bucs, who allowed 12.3 and won the Super Bowl.

This suggests balance is important. But even when you look at the teams with the biggest scoring differentials, only one of the top five won a Super Bowl (the '99 Rams, averaging 32.9 ppg and allowing 15.1). The 2007 Pats were the best (36.8-17.1, 19.7 differential) followed by the '68 Colts, the '99 Rams, the '69 Vikes and the '68 Cowboys. The Rams were the only ones who won the big game. However five of the next six on the list were Lombardi Trophy winners. We are, however, entering an area where there is an element of the tautological—good teams win because they have big winning margins sounds like the kind of thing Bill Belichick says at post-game press conferences.

When Peyton Manning's Colts used to fail in the playoffs, fingers were pointed at their defense, but the reality was their losses came when their offense couldn't function normallyt; the same thing the Ravens did to the Pats Sunday (they lost this season to the Ravens twice, the Cards, the Seahawks, and the Niners, all physical defenses, and four of them birds). In Tom Brady's playoff wins, the Pats have averaged 27.5 points, in their losses only 18. For Manning the split is even higher, 31.4 in wins, 16.1 in losses. This year the Broncos allowed 19.2 ppg, the Pats 21.5, and both fell to the Ravens, who allowed Denver's offense only 21 points, and the Pats only 13.

The adage makes more sense the way Jim Criner once said it to me, 'offense wins games, defense wins championships', meaning (I think) that a good defense could always stop an offense, whereas a good offense might not always be able to top a defense. Think about it in the context of the Patriots-Ravens game last Sunday. The Pats scored a lot of points this year, but their offense was largely horizontal, especially without Gronk. So a typical Patriots' drive contained a lot of plays, and required a good deal of precision. Watching them run hurry-up on teams like Houston was a thing of beauty. But if you have to be precise on six, or eight, or ten plays, it only requires the defense to upset that precision once, or twice, in order to stop your drive. The Ravens, by playing a lot of nickel, with Haloti Ngata at the nose, weren't as bothered by the hurry-up, and their physical dominance made them less vulnerable to the runs, and allowed them to disrupt enough plays to force the Pats out of their comfort zone. I'm convinced Wes Welker was concussed by Bernard Pollard with the hit just before he made a crucial third-down drop; Welker also seemed to be favouring his ribs. Tom Brady was clearly thinking about hits when he collapsed after running into the umpire, when he slid rather than try to get out of bounds at the end of the first half, and when he threw a ball away on fourth down rather than try to evade Ngata. The Ravens took the Pats out of their timing, and the Pats made enough mistakes themselves to 'prove' yet again, as Peter King might say, I'm not saying defense does win championships, but defense won this one. Or maybe it was the Ravens' offense. And Jim, at least until the Super Bowl, was right.

CHRIS BROWN'S SMART FOOTBALL

Chris Brown's Smart Football columns are essential reading for analysis of modern football's Xs and Os, and The Essential Smart Football is more of the same. I enjoyed this collection in book form, indeed have re-read some it already, but I also found the whole of this volume less effective than the sum of its internet parts.

This is for two reasons, one of them unavoidable and the other not. The first, and unavoidable one, is that when Brown posts on the internet, there are usually, in addition to diagramming, video clips which he uses to illustrate the concepts, schemes, or plays he is explaining. He links to brilliant video of coaching sessions, where things are explained in the kind of context I've only got when I had really good access with a couple of coaches in NFL Europe. It's that depth of reference detail that makes his work so informative and enjoyable. In the book format, much of that is lost, which, as I say is unavoidable. It does not diminish the impact of anything Brown has written here, it just means there's more explanation left unsaid.

The second reason is that this is very much a collection of individual pieces, yet there is a themed book screaming to be let out by some perceptive editor. The theme is the continual evolving nature of offensive and defensive football, and how the changes in college offense are impacting the NFL in ways that not long ago were thought impossible. Spread offenses couldn't work in the NFL, so the argument went, because the players were that much bigger, faster, and better, they were better-prepared by professional coaches. Schemes that existed to bridge the perpetual talent gap in college (and at lower levels), to allow less-gifted athletic teams to compete with the more physically talented, just wouldn't work at the next level.

Well, as we have seen, that concept is being proven wrong. Brown details many of the ways in which it is, and strips down many of the college concepts which already are becoming keys to the NFL game too. I love the way Brown jumps from Urban Meyer's spread offense to the 3-3-5 defense to Mike Leach (via his book Swing Your Sword). But there are further sections on Frank Beamer or Nick Saban, for example, that would continue that back and forth argument, as well as a few on offense as well. Brown is brilliant on the largely unacknowledged influence of Steve Spurrier, and tracks the history of Dick LeBeau's zone blitz and the Alex Gibbs school of run-blocking in an almost off-hand way (the former in a fine dissection of the Packers-Steelers Super Bowl?. He's very good at getting from the specific (or practical) to the theoretical, as in his pre-Super Bowl piece on Victor Cruz and the Giants' relation to the spread offense.

But all this wonderful analysis would have had more impact had it been analysed to a point, and I can almost see why not. Because there are three pieces here about the Patriots: one on how Rex Ryan created the new Pats' offense, which makes perfect sense from the moment you read the title, one on Brady and the no-huddle, and one on the one-gap and two-gap defense, which pointed out something I had not noticed about the New England defense last season: not only were they shifting looks, they were often playing half the field in a one-gap, 4-man front, and the other in a two-gap 3-front. I went back and looked and Brown, of course, was right.

New England has been a crucible of experimentation in the Belichick era; he famously has sought ought Urban Meyer, Nick Saban and others in a conscious effort to translate their concepts into the NFL game. His O line operates closer to Alex Gibbs style than many would notice, and his defenses owe much to the zone-blitz. I wonder if, had Brown organised this book along the themes I've suggested, if it wouldn't wind up funnelling down in the end to an analysis of the Pats as the team that most brings this evolution of the NFL game to the forefront? I don't suggest for a moment that it did, and if it did, it might well limit the book's appeal—but I do think that judicious editing, with the elements re-ordered and connected by Brown's macro-analysis, would have made this a classic, instead of just essential reading.

The Essential Smart Football by Chris B Brown
self-published, ISBN 9781470125592 $5.99 (available via Amazon) 

BEHIND FOOTBALL'S Xs AND Os: The Games That Changed The Game and War Room

It may seem odd that I waited until after football season to tackle two books about the sport, but that may have something to do with my desire to find some uses for my Christmas Kindle besides downloading 19th century books I ought to have read but never did and probably won't in the near future but can feel virtuous about because I carry them around with me while I travel.

It may also seem like I jinked Ron Jaworski, who, just after I finished his book (but before I reviewed it) was dumped as the analyst on ESPN's Monday Night Football, in favour of leaving a two-man booth with Mike Tirico and Jon Gruden. While Jaws and Chucky were never really a comfortable match, clearly the latter's youth and edginess appealed more to ESPN's execs than Jaws' more analytic film study and rust-belt survivor image. I'd put Jaws up near the top of colour men, and in truth he's probably better suited to the breakdown shows, where he has time to study, than to the immediacy of the MNF broadcast (not to mention the relentless youth-oriented-attention-span-of-a-fruit-fly-on-speed approach of ESPN). He runs rings around Gruden in terms of analysing what is going on during a game, but Gruden's got the buzz of the fruit fly down pat.

Having said that, I was a little disappointed in this book, mostly because the title is somewhat misleading. The games he chooses are not necessarily those that triggered various steps of gridiron evolution, but in most cases simply those that provide good illustrations of the strategies he wants to highlight. And I wonder too whether in most cases these are actual catalysts for evolution, or might be better described as stages of that evolution. For example, the third stage is Don Coryell's 'roving Y', a tactic which itself evolved from the remarkable versatility of tight end Kellen Winslow. But the overall picture of Air Coryell itself evolved from Sid Gillman's Vertical Stretch (Jaws' first Sunday) and so did Bill Walsh's West Coast offense (Walsh in effect turned Gillman's vertical concepts horizontal—where Al Davis, for example, preferred to stick with the vertical). My point is simply that you shouldn't expect a moment that 'changed' the NFL, such changes are gradual, and not every team or every coach buys into them. He's very good on Gillman and Coryell, as you'd expect, but just as good on Buddy Ryan's and Dick LeBeau's defenses. I might have liked to see him going back a bit further--Gillman for example, was influenced heavily by Clark Shaugnessy's early-50s Rams, while the 3-4 defense had some of its origins in Gillman's defensive coordinator, one Chuck Noll, using a 4-3 tackle (Ernie Ladd) over the center, which was followed by Hank Stram's Chiefs, and then Joe Collier's defenses in Denver. The innovations in the AFL weren't all offensive.

Trying to mix history and tactics makes a tough dilemma for Jaws, because publishers need more of a hook to sell the book than simply the history he provides, or the analysis of systems and what makes them work which is fascinating. What is obvious, too, is the way personnel influences planning (it's no coincidence that Buddy Ryan's 46 defense, which is included here, like Bill Arnsbarger's 53, drew their names from the jersey number of a player key to their construction). But even beyond that, think of the ways Ryan used the exceptional personnel he had—good man cover corners, hard hitting safeties, a flexible D lineman and a top-flight pass rusher, a brilliant MLB etc—to make his defense better. There's an interesting essay to be written there about the way personnel can influence a system, and then the way the system influences the personnel. Success lies in the median between those ideas, which boil down to putting players in a position to make plays; not asking them to do what they can't do, and then getting players who can do what the system wants them to do.

Even Jaws' most obvious single-game (as opposed to a game illustrating an ongoing system) example, Bill Belichick's 'Bulls-Eye' (Jaws' term) game plan, designed to stop the Rams' Marshall Faulk in the Super Bowl, is not something every coach will try. Belichick (absent a game-changer like Lawrence Taylor, and even with him) seems to believe in taking away the opponent's most dangerous weapon (see the last Super Bowl against the Giants, where the Pats neutralised Victor Cruz) and force teams to beat you with their own Plan B. So it's hard to say that this game changed the NFL, not nearly as much as shocked it. It certainly didn't seem to change the way the NFL does business and, as we have seen, although it prompted a run on Belichick coaches, execs, and to a lesser degree players, few of them have achieved enough success to have any effect on the way the league operates.

In fact, you can see a lot of that in Michael Holley's War Room, the title of which is also somewhat misleading, though its subtitle states exactly what the book is really about. It's not about a 'war room', which we think of as being where NFL drafts are engineered, as about the way Belichick built his Patriots' front office staff, and the way those people eventually moved on. I was already aware of how many of the people in the Pats' coaching tree were, like Belichick, at least second-generation football men, sons of coaches, who grew with the game in their vocabulary and their blood. But as Holley portrays various Pats and ex-Pats, in particular Scott Pioli and Thomas Dimitroff from Belichick's front-office, the more you see the sort of dedication and obsession that is needed to succeed--something which growing up in the game, as opposed to playing it, might help, but something which isn't confined to . It's somewhere between a corporation and the military, and it's also no coincidence that, like the NFL itself, military analogies are used constantly, military examples are held up as goals, and the military life is celebrated. You need a similar sort of hierarchical control, a pecking order, a firm leader to run an NFL team, as much as you need the sort of unthinking, reflex obedience to a plan and to orders to succeed on the field. Questioning authority becomes a difficult task, and no one ever stops to examine the military's inbuilt conservatism, its tendancy toward self-perpetuating bloat and congratulation.

I am extending the metaphor here, because Holley never suggests that that is the way the Patriots functioned, and I would never suggest that Belichick actually operates in such an exaggerated way—there's no one in football more open to new ideas, and Holley also makes it clear that he's easier to question, within certain limits, than, say, his mentor Bill Parcells.

But those coming to this book to try to find out why Belichick chose Lawrence Maroney and Chad Jackson in the draft will be interested to learn that he basically overruled the opinions of most, if not all, of his personnel staff, but will never find out why. And those wondering why the Pats passed on Clay Matthews will hear nary a word.

What you will get is a look into the Scott Pioli now accused of micro-managing the Chiefs front-office and indulging paranoia to the the extent employees are not allowed to watch team practices through their office windows. And into the Tom Dimitroff who rides a bicycle and eats tofu while following in his father's more traditional football footsteps. The why of this is something Holley leaves alone, but the portrait is fascinating. Along the way, looks at Eric Mangini, Josh McDaniels, Brian Daboll, even Romeo Crennell and Charlie Weis, are interesting but never really revealing.

But of course, in the end, the Patriots' war room boils down to the mind of Bill Belichick, and our curiosity about the real Belichick remains unsatisfied. Holley goes a long way into showing us the kind of systems Belichick has constructed, the way he has groomed his support and their successors. It reminds me more of Paul Brown than many of the great coaches of the modern era, and as with Paul Brown, the system is successful to an extent. The challenge is moving forward and passing that extent, creating a new one. Whether Belichick has already done that, or whether, like Brown, he is facing that challenge after a great ten-year run. Holley's book doesn't really suggest what the answer might be. It is interesting, but in the end might tell you more about Dimitroff's Falcons or Pioli's Chiefs than the Pats.

The Games That Changed The Game: The Evolution of the NFL in Seven Sundays by Ron Jaworski, David Plaut, and Greg Cosell (ESPN Books, $26.00, ISBN 9780345517951)

The War Room: The Legacy of Bill Belichick & the Art of Making the Perfect Team by Michael Holley (Harper, $25.99, ISBN 9780063088871)