The Essential Smart Football is an examination of football’s most important strategies and ideas, through the lens of the game’s best coaches, players, and schemes. Brilliantly written and eschewing unnecessary jargon and technicality, it makes a major contribution to our understanding of football to help all of us — coaches, players, and fans — appreciate the game we love all the more.

The Essential Smart Football features analysis of football’s top strategists and their schemes, including:

• Urban Meyer’s spread offense
• Tom Brady’s no-huddle attack
• Bill Belichick’s hybrid defense
• Gus Malzahn’s up-tempo offense
• Charlie Strong’s defensive evolution
• Mike Leach’s pass-happy “Air Raid”
• The most popular scheme for running the ball in the NFL
• Nick Saban’s school of defense.

The book also includes explorations of modern approaches to the West Coast Offense, evolutions in defensive fronts and coverages, the changing role of the running game in spread and pro-style offenses, and much more.