quarterback

Quarterback Play: Fundamentals and Techniques
$19.95
I'm trying to learn as much as I can about the quarterback position and I have already learned vasts amounts of knowledge from this book just from reading twenty pages. I highly recommend this book for anybody who wants to learn more about football or who is looking to go into coaching. Ron Jenkins' breaks the game down into pieces that can be digested by everyday fans. I can't wait to read more.

Wade Peery

Cutters��� Football Quarterback Gloves
$39.99
Maybe it's just me, but I've thrown with a glove on many times and never had an issue until this glove. I found it very difficult to adjust to. The glove also became very slippery when it got wet.

Joe Montana's Art and Magic of Quarterbacking: The Secrets of the Game from One of the All-Time Best
$14.95
Like many of the current crop of younger football coaches, I grew up in a 1980's that was dominated at the NFL level by the West Coast Offense and the San Francisco 49ers. One of the quarterbacks of that amazing dynasty was Joe Montana, and he was very, very good at what he did.

Unfortunately, the book he authored really doesn't go in depth on how he achieved that success. Very little of the player's mechanics are covered. There is no discussion of proper arm motion when passing. There is no discussion of hip angling, receiver progression or other mechanics of function within a football play.

This book is largely a series of anecdotes about Joe's career, rather than a specific list of skills and drills for young quarterbacks. His stories are interesting, but meaningless to the coach looking to improve his players.

I strongly recommend another book by another Super Bowl winning quarterback. "Phil Simms on Passing: Fundamentals of Throwing the Football" is actually ABOUT the mechanics of throwing the ball. All the little tidbits that have been ignored by the miserable execution of the modern NFL are listed.

For example: Phil Simms discusses the importance of keeping the elbows pinned to the sides when dropping back. With both hands on the ball, this reduces the risk of a fumble if sacked by surprise from behind. The year he discovered this he dropped his fumbles from 11 the prior year to three. I was so impressed that I began using that technique with my high school program immediately; our quarterbacks have not fumbled in five years.

Phil Simms also covers the adaptation of the West Coast Offense as a precision passing attack-- so precise in fact, that he was taught, "to hit the receiver on the number away from the defender, so the receiver would know which way to turn to avoid the tackle and could gain extra yardage." These are the tips that should have been in Joe Montana's book, and were not.

Joe Montana's book barely covers the three and five step drops, ignores handoffs and faking, and brushes over roll out passing and throwing on the run. By contrast, Phil Simms's book covers one step, three step, five step, seven step, roll outs, throwing on the run, avoiding the sack, how to avoid the interception, how to throw the intentional incomplete to avoid the sack, reading the zones, reading man-to-man coverage, receiver progressions, securing the football, mechanics of a proper handoff, proper pitching/tossing, proper faking, and several other aspects of playing quarterback.

Joe Montana's book is a good read for the fan with an interest in his career, or the dad that wants to play catch with his son and maybe avoid creating bad habits by teaching incorrect mechanics, but it just doesn't have the depth that it should. For a coach with a serious agenda of improving his football team, I just can't recommend it. Look for Phil Simms's book instead. You'll get much more out of it.

~D.

Sports Illustrated Monday Morning Quarterback: A fully caffeinated guide to everything you need to know about the NFL
$25.95
A confession: I know and admire Peter King. Another confession: I'm a professional writer, and when I want to read for pleasure, I either crack open another Elmore Leonard or, Mondays, at lunch, treat myself to Peter's MMQB. No one knows football like Peter King, and it's a treat to have some of his best columns collected in a book. If you haven't read him, I envy you the pleasure of encountering his voice for the first time -- expert yet unaffected, knowing yet curious, and funny, always funny, often laughing at himself with as much gusto as he pokes fun at some of the athletes in these pages. Reading some of these columns a second time gave me as much pleasure as reading them on line. Better in fact, because they seem more resonant on the printed page. Some of his most poignant work is here too. "Family Matters," his column on the death of James Dungy, Tony Dungy's son, still gives me pause, makes me reflect. Peter, of course, is writing about a lot more than football. He's a chronicler of American culture. Sometimes his lens is the game, sometimes the life of a player. Here too are riffs on coffee and airplane rides and -- how can I put this delicately -- even his colonic caper. He is us and we are him and the voice is both original and familiar. That's his great writer's secret. He writes as if he knows everyone who reads him. Hats off too to Sports Illustrated for producing a good looking and clever text with entertaining asides and catchy icons. And I really enjoyed the photo insert in the middle, especially the last page which shows my Giants and Michael Strahan swarming poor Tom Brady to create the famous 18-1. I know what I'm getting my sons, Ben and Josh -- Giants fanatics like their father -- for Christmas.