Inside the Helmet: A Player's Eye View of the NFL

by Peter King

To the unsophisticated eye, football is a simple game. Eleven hulking behemoths line up on one side of a football; another eleven line up across from them. When the ball is snapped, both sides erupt into a single writhing, violent mass of bodies. Then, when everyone stops moving, they line up and do it again. Just because football doesn't look neat and precise doesn't mean that it lacks order. In fact, each seemingly chaotic play is the result of analysis, planning, practice, split-second adjustments, and the executions of well-rehearsed movements. And, because every player on the field is involved in the success or failure of each play, the attention to detail in football is mind-boggling. In Inside the Helmet, Peter King, Sports Illustrated's lead pro football columnist, takes us inside the world of professional football and shows us the game only the players and coaches see. As he profiles football's best and brightest, King shows us the intricacies of each position and why attention to detail wins and loses games. He shares a week with Boomer Esiason as he prepares for a game and shows us how his endless hours of film study and pregame preparation translate into action on the field. He shows us how a one-man gang like Bruce Smith can change a game with his speed, strength, and technique and what an offense must do to contain him. He takes us inside the high-stakes game within the game played by league-leading pass receiver Hayward Jeffires and all-pro defensive back Rod Woodson as they face off against each other play after play. He also shows us how Barry Sanders, the game's best running back, finds a hole, as well as what he sees, feels, and senses as he slices through a defense. Inside the Helmet shows us what football coaches really do. We fly across the country with one of the game's best, Jimmy Johnson, as he and his staff look for talent, and watch as they work the phone on draft day. King also shows us how a head coach supervises his team as they ge

Genres: Sports, Football, Nonfiction

240 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1993

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.

Born in Springfield, Mass., and raised in Enfield, CT., where he was the captain of his high school baseball and soccer teams, King earned a bachelor of arts degree in journalism from Ohio University in 1979.

King has written six books, the most recent being Monday Morning Quarterback: A Fully Caffeinated Guide to Everything You Need to Know About the NFL. Prior to that King authored Inside the Helmet: A Player's-Eye View of Pro Football, which examines the inner lives and jobs of some of the NFL's biggest names, and Football: A History of the Professional Game, which profiles the teams, players and events of the NFL's first 75 years.

King lives in Boston with his wife, Ann. The couple has two adult daughters, Laura and Mary Beth.

Reviews

[Yune · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Football is the real thinking person's sport in America, not baseball. I'm a Rotisserie nerd, and I love baseball. But if I read one more treatise on how much thought it takes Tony LaRussa and Dave Duncan to figure how to pitch Wade Boggs, I'm going to puke. It takes two or three days of film study and arguing in coaches' meetings for Dave Wannstedt to figure out how he's going to defend Barry Sanders. The essence of baseball is one on one. The essence of footbal is eleven on eleven. 'You're talking basic math compared to physics when you talk baseball to football,' my friend Billy Ard, the former Giants guard, says."

I think this is why I like football (and how a math Ph.D. once tried to explain why he liked football, back when I was clueless in Korea) -- the strategy of it all. I'm starting to wonder about the personal cost to the players, though.