Complete Linebacking

by Lou Tepper

The linebacker position is more challenging than ever, whether a player is taking on a 320-pound lineman or covering a speedy receiver. In Complete Linebacking , Lou Tepper tells and shows how to excel at one of the game's most demanding positions. Tepper has coached three Butkus Award winners-Alfred Williams, Dana Howard, and Kevin Hardy-plus one Butkus runner-up and 20 linebackers who have gone on to play in the NFL. In his 30 years of college coaching, Tepper's defenses have consistently been top-ranked nationally. The book describes in depth and illustrates clearly the fundamentals, pre-snap keys, and techniques used by any inside or outside linebacker in a specific defense. A special teaching section explains how to prepare quality practices and meetings to maximize learning and performance. Complete Linebacking provides full coverage for coaching and playing the position, - the qualities needed to play linebacker;
- fundamental skills for all linebackers, regardless of the team's scheme;
- keys to look for in an offense for clues about the upcoming play before the ball is snapped;
- tips for teaching the linebacker position in team meetings and practices; and
- a grading system to evaluate performance. The book also includes four key linebacker ability tests and 33 drills to measure and improve position-specific skills. More than 200 diagrams and photographs illustrate Tepper's detailed explanations. No other book has ever addressed this subject in such depth.
Complete Linebacking is an essential book for every coach's library.

Genres: Football, Sports

328 pages, Paperback

First published February 20, 1998

Reviews

[Matt Davenport · Rating 4 out of 5]

A super helpful book for not only learning more nuances about tackling, shedding, and coverage techniques, but also the common gap-read and key-reads made by different LB assignments. Definitely the most thorough read I've found of the subject so far, and it increased my football knowledge immensely.

The one addition I wish was more prevalent would be to give more examples of how each LB type (30, 31, 32, 51/52, hawk, mike, etc.) actually fit into common defenses. This book primarily just focused on the author's speciality, the 3-3 along with some 4 man fronts, but I would've liked a deeper dive into what defenses these roles are most prevalent in respectively.

[Jeff DeRosa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I never played or coached linebacker. But for the 2017 season was assigned the position of "Linebacker Coach" for our high school football team. The information found in this book is outstanding. I can't imagine how this season would have gone if I didn't buy this book. Lou Tepper not only knows football, he knows how to communicate his knowledge. Drills, gameplay, fundamentals - it's all here.

[Steven]

Solid info on basic linebacker play. Author does a nice job not getting bogged down with terminology.

[Trey · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very well written book. The author give the reader a lot of good information.