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9 football books to kick off the 2018 season

Here are excerpts from nine new releases.

9. ‘The Pats: An Illustrated History of the New England Patriots,’ by Glenn Stout and Richard Johnson

  • By Ross Atkin

Even for fans who can’t get enough of the New England Patriots,”Pats” should either satisfy their voracious appetites or come mighty close. it’s a richly illustrated, large-format book that is as generous in chronicling the team’s modern success as it is in recounting its humble origins and many lean years. For some historical perspective, the Patriots lost the 1963 American Football League championship game 51-10 to the San Diego Chargers and were handed the worst defeat in Super Bowl history up to that point in 1986 with a 46-10 loss to the Chicago Bears. The transformation into a five-time Super Bowl champion, of course, provides plenty to write about the Bill Belichick-Tom Brady era that pairs perhaps the greatest coach and quarterback of all time into stewards of the perennial contender.

Here’s an excerpt from The Pats:

“[Bill] Belichick is certainly not the only head coach whose protégés have failed to thrive. The assistants to vaunted Green Bay Packer coach Vince Lombardi, for instance, left a scant mark on the game as head coaches. It’s not thoroughly surprising. Assistants are not hired for their head coaching potential but for their teaching skills, work ethic, and subservience to a system. Patriots coaches are expected to be as focused as their boss and to do their job, not his. Belichick tends to hire what former assistant Mike Judge referred to as those with a ‘clean mind’ – not former head coaches but younger assistants untethered to their own ideas, the coaching equivalent of the player free agents ignored by others, people Belichick can indoctrinate into his system.”

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

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